By Gregory Childress

gchildress@heraldsun.com; 918-1046

Chapel Hill — Chapel Hill voters elected Councilman Mark Kleinschmidt mayor and re-elected two incumbents and two newcomers to the Town Council.

Kleinschmidt, a two-term councilman, edged Councilman Matt Czajkowski, in a tightly contested race, which remained in doubt until the very last precinct reported.

In the end, Kleinschmidt prevailed garnering 49.49 percent of the vote to 46.53 percent for Czajkowski.

Throughout the campaign most incumbents found themselves defending their records on taxes and growth and development issues against challengers who contended that the town needs to become more pro-business to relieve the tax burden on residential property.

“The town was deeply divided over which way to go,” Kleinschmidt said. “I think now there will be a need for healing and demonstrated leadership, which I hope I can provide.”

Kleinschmidt said he thought the difference in the race was his army of volunteers who worked hard to ensure he was elected.

“The margin was so close that the work of every single volunteer was critical,” Kleinschmidt said.

Meanwhile, Czajkowski said his strong showing will send a message to the council.

“A lot of voters agreed with me,” Czajkowski said. “I had a significant number of deeply committed supporters.”

A loss for Kleinschmidt would have brought his council tenure to an end in December, but Czajkowski remains on the panel to complete his term, which ends 2011.

Augustus Cho finished third in the mayor’s race with 2.68 percent of the vote. And Kevin Wolff, who announced he was resigning from the race but never did so officially, came in last place with 1.16 percent of the vote, the equivalent of 94 of the 8,094 votes cast in the mayor’s race.

In the Town Council race, two incumbents, Laurin Easthom and Ed Harrison, were re-elected. They will be joined by newcomers Penny Rich, who outpaced all Town Council candidates with 15.57 percent of the vote, and Gene Pease.

Incumbent Jim Merritt, who was appointed to council in November 2008 to replace Bill Thorpe, who died in September 2008, lost his bid to reclaim the seat, finishing sixth in the eight-way race for four seats.

Merritt said he was disappointed at the loss because he was looking forward to being elected by voters to serve.

“That’s one of the reasons I didn’t put my name in for the appointment [to the council vacancy created by the resignation of Bill Strom],” Merritt said. “If I was going to serve again, I wanted to be elected by the citizens.”

The fifth-place finisher was Matt Pohlman, who, if some town residents had their way, would be appointed to the council to replace Strom, who resigned over the summer.

Supporters of that idea contend that appointing the fifth-place finisher is the fairest way to name Strom’s replacement because the former councilman resigned too late for voters to elect one in Tuesday’s election.

Jon DeHart finished seventh with 10.73 percent of the vote and Will Raymond was last with 5.55 percent of the vote.