After a dismal 17 percent of New Hanover County residents reaffirmed their civic right to vote in the Nov. 8 municipal elections, Bill Saffo has predictably retained the seat of Wilmington mayor for another four years while City Council has added two new faces to its membership.

 Long-shot Republican mayoral candidate Justin LaNasa lost to Saffo, capturing 28 percent of the vote against Saffo’s 70 percent. Out of the nine-member field of city council candidates, Laura Padgett won a fifth term with 17 percent of the vote, and council members Ronald Sparks and Kristi Campos will be replaced by Republican Neil Anderson and Democrat Margaret Haynes, who netted 14 and 16 percent, respectively.

 In pre-election debates, veteran politician Saffo easily dominated the airwaves with composure and well-delivered quips, while LaNasa frequently struggled to distill his objections to the status quo into concrete policy positions, relegating his debate responses on the subject of incentives to phrases like the “backbone of our country” and repeatedly leaving himself open to prepared remarks from his more rehearsed opponent.

 LaNasa’s problem often proved a systemic one, however, with candidates from across the local political spectrum frequently offering dim echoes of the polarized national debate. Seizing on last year’s Tea Party-dominated emphasis on smaller government, several candidates even went so far as to commit to supporting Wilmington’s withdrawal from the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, a position that even many early opponents of the authority tended to admit would leave the city saddled with considerable debt from the county, as per the terms of the contract.

 While local elections often suffer less from concerted character assassination due to their smaller scope and consequently smaller campaign war chests, this year’s races yielded at least a couple exceptions. UNCW student and city council candidate Joshua Fulton received sporadic criticism during the race for his strict libertarian policy positions. But the attacks stepped up considerably in an eleventh-hour mass email entitled “Morality in Wilmington Politics,” sent anonymously to local media outlets, which directed those receiving the message to a seemingly fabricated profile page. The profile, allegedly Fulton’s, was on an S&M dating website.

 This was the second installment of anonymous attacks against Fulton, the first being a much-publicized website, therealjoshfulton.com, which dedicated considerable space to making harsh, personal attacks on the candidate as well as on his previous writing. The website domain was registered to Domains by Proxy, an internet service with a history of political use through anonymous attack websites.

On campus, the sometimes heated race was far more muted, to say the least. As the designated polling place for Precinct W24, the Warwick Center Ballroom remained notably quiet throughout Tuesday. A handful of election judges milled about, on hand to assist a largely absent electorate as they idly munched snacks and watched the clock. With about two hours left until the official closing of the polls, voter number 57 walked into the room, immediately deploring the polling setup as unacceptable and airing his concerns about the parking situation’s possible effect on turnout.

While Precinct W24 mainly covers UNCW’s sprawling campus, it also serves part of the surrounding off-campus area, in which many elderly residents live. Consigned to parking in Lot M, voters that made the drive onto campus faced what amounted to an arduous walk for some, which, according to Chief Polling Judge Dana Albritton, posed multiple difficulties for voters throughout the day.

Earlier, an older gentleman had apparently been undeterred by the physical challenge. “He was practically crawling in; he only made it as far as the sofas outside. His wife came in and said that he wouldn’t be able to make it,” recalled Albritton. “So she brought the car around and we ended up taking a ballot out to him, and he voted curbside.”

Out of 24 precincts participating in New Hanover County, Precinct W24 reported the lowest turnout with 3.22 percent, or 142 out of 4,412 registered voters casting ballots.