DIXFIELD – Voters hitting Tuesday’s polls had a choice between four candidates for two Board of Selectmen seats up for grabs.

Political newcomer Stephen Donahue ran away with the election, garnering 148 votes to win a three-year term, while incumbent Selectman Eugene Skibitsky retained his seat, netting 117 votes.

Opponents Norman Mitchell of East Dixfield and Pamela Pace of Dixfield respectively tallied 109 and 98 votes.

Of the three, only Pace actively campaigned, including right up through voting day. She stood at the fire station door, greeting incoming residents.

Donahue, 49, a Dixfield native with a wife and two children, graduated from Dirigo High School in 1972. For the past 13 years, he has worked in the mechanical maintenance machine shop at MeadWestvaco in Rumford.

Skibitsky, 48, a New York native with a wife and four children, has lived in Dixfield since 1978. He works as the general manager for Western Maine Transportation, a job he’s held for 25 years.

Despite growing up in Turner, Mitchell, a Route 17 resident in East Dixfield since 1986, is a descendant of Ebenezer Holman, one of the Dixfield’s early settlers.

Mitchell, 40, whose wife Terri Coolidge’s lineage in East Dixfield goes back seven generations, works in Wilton as the associate licensing coordinator for the ICT Group, a worldwide customer service provider based out of Pennsylvania.

Pace, 49, is a Rumford native with a husband and six children. The homemaker, who worked as a school teacher for 12 years, returned from Lawrence, Mass., where she lived for 25 years, to Rumford in 1991 and to Dixfield in January.

Of the candidates running unopposed for three three-year seats on SAD 21’s School Board, incumbent Director Cynthia Gould tallied 204 votes to retain her seat. Candidates David W. Berry and Leslie Skibitsky tallied 206 and 186 votes respectively, taking the other two spots.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

Copy the Story Link