• Barrow: Brower 195, Ahmaogak 187

• Anaktuvuk Pass: Ahmaogak 44, Brower 20

• Atqasuk: Ahmaogak 39, Brower 21

• Kaktovik: Ahmaogak 44, Brower 26

• Nuiqsut: Brower 63, Ahmaogak 24

• Point Hope:  Brower 38, Ahmaogak 35

• Point Lay: Brower 110, Ahmaogak 54

• Wainwright: Brower 25, Ahmaogak 6

•  Browerville: Brower 408, Ahmaogak 407 

If Charlotte Brower hangs onto her lead and captures the race for mayor in America's largest borough, she can thank the voters of Point Lay and Nuiqsuit.

The initial tally showed Brower with 906 votes and holding a 65-vote margin over former mayor George Ahmaogak. Some 268 absentee or challenged ballots remain to be counted.

Of the nine North Slope communities that voted, Brower owned a slim advantage or trailed Ahmaogak in six of them. But she dominated the Nuiqsut (63-24) and Point Lay (110-54) vote by large margins, enough to push her into a comfortable lead.

The community with the most voters, Browerville, was also the one that carried her name. But Brower owned just a one-vote edge there. 

Voter turnout for the runoff election was 34 percent, hardly surprising considering the massive storm bearing down on the region on the day of the runoff election. Election workers had to deal with uncertainty as many smaller precincts simultaneously prepared for the storm and kept polls open. Voters last month narrowly chose Brower and Ahmaogak from a pool of five candidates. The third-highest vote-getter, Fenton Rexford, who won just over 27 percent of the vote, endorsed Ahmaogak.

The campaign was colored by the indictment of Ahmaogak’s wife, Maggie, for embezzling some $475,000 from the Alaska Eskimo Commission just weeks before the election.

The candidates exchanged criticisms in the final weeks of the runoff campaign, dredging up a history of political wrongdoings by family members and advisers.

Brower’s husband, Eugene, plead guilty to tax evasion when he was borough mayor in the 1980s. Meanwhile, George Ahmaogak, Sr., was forced to pay back thousands of dollars to the North Slope Borough for a trip he took to Hawaii in the '90s.

This article originally appeared in The Arctic Sounder and is republished here with permission.