CHESTERTOWN — Andre DeMattia and Stephen J. Lozar have won seats on the town council here in a special election Wednesday, Jan. 28 that was pushed back one day due to a winter storm over the weekend that made for hazardous road conditions.
DeMattia received 58 votes in the Ward 3 race, 17 more than challenger John James Beloved.
Lozar with 34 votes prevailed in the three-candidate race in Ward 4. Marcus Goldman received 32 votes and Ryan McGuire received 22 votes.
DeMattia is the co-CEO of Talkie Communications.
Lozar spent nearly 19 years as an officer with the Chestertown Police Department, retiring with the rank of sergeant. Currently he is a regional manager for a security firm based in Washington, D.C., overseeing security operations for most of the state facilities on the Eastern Shore.
The outcome in Ward 4 was not official until Thursday when four provisional ballots were examined. After verifying these ballots with the Kent County Board of Elections, two were disqualified; one voter did not live in the municipal limits of Chestertown and the other’s registration had been cancelled in 2024 for an unknown reason, according to a post on the town’s website.
Of the two qualified provisional ballots, Goldman received one and Beloved received the other.
The town’s Board of Supervisors of Elections certified the results on Thursday, according to Town Clerk Lynda Thomas.
DeMattia will serve a full four-year term as the successor to Jose Medrano.
Lozar will serve the remaining two years on the council term of Meghan Efland, who was elected mayor in Chestertown’s municipal election in November and assumed her new office on Jan. 5.
DeMattia and Lozar will be sworn in Monday, Feb. 2 and immediately take their seats, joining Sheila Austrian of Ward 1 and Tom Herz of Ward 2.
Austrian was elected in November, when the Ward 3 seat also was on the ballot.
The special election for Ward 3 was needed because Medrano did not seek a second term and no one filed by the Oct. 3 deadline.
Turnout for the special election was low. A total of 187 votes were cast: 164 in person, 21 absentee ballots and two provisional ballots.
According to Town Clerk Thomas, there are 923 registered voters in Ward 3 and 905 in Ward 4.
Editor’s note: This reporting was updated Thursday, Jan. 29 after the provisional ballots were counted.
