Unalaska, AK – Results from Unalaska's three elections held Tuesday show a too-close-to-call mayor's election, a clear winner in one City Council election and a runoff for a deposed incumbent's seat in the other.

Preliminary tallies show incumbent Mayor Shirley Marquardt holding onto her office by a seven-vote margin, leading challenger Shannon Morrison 265 votes to 258 and considerably ahead of Katherine McGlashan, who finished third with 130 votes. With her current 40.4 percent of the vote, Marquardt would also avoid a runoff election against Morrison, which takes place when neither candidate gets more than 40 percent of the total vote.

But there are at least 40 absentee ballots and 13 question ballots yet to be counted, enough to push the election in several directions. Those votes could produce a clear victory for either Marquardt or Morrison, or they could send the election to a runoff. They'll be counted on Friday, and Marquardt said that whichever way the race breaks, it's been an interesting one.

"Who wants a boring old election in Unalaska anyway, right?" she said. "I'm grateful for the folks who came out and voted on my behalf--we'll just have to wait til Friday and see what happens."

Morrison wasn't willing to speculate on whether he would be able to pull into the lead in the event of a runoff.

"I'm pretty sure that I will pick up more votes, [but] Shirley will also pick up more votes," he said.

Meanwhile, Randall Baker topped the crowded field of competitors for Council Seat D with 35.8 percent of the vote. That was enough to knock out incumbent D.H. "Kris" Flanagan and challenger Chris Bobbitt, but not enough to avoid a runoff against David Gregory, who came in second with 29.6 percent.

The only clear winner on Tuesday was City Council member Roger Rowland, who decisively defended his seat against Valarie Lemus 335 votes to 232. Former council member Joanna Aldridge's name remained on the ballot even though she bowed out of the race last month. She received 68 votes.

Rowland said he considers the vote for him to be an endorsement of the current path the city government is on.

"I think the city likes the direction I was going, and the decisions I was making," he said. "It was kind of the direction the city was going, and I plan to continue that."

Tuesday's election demonstrated both the power and the limitations of the Unalaska Union Coalition, an ad-hoc group of local labor groups whose influence was one of the major unknowns in the weeks leading up to the election. The coalition endorsed Morrison, Baker and Lemus, all of whom managed to pull in more than 35 percent of the vote in their respective races. That was enough to unseat or seriously threaten veteran incumbents in the two races with three or more candidates, but left the coalition's candidate 16 percent short in the one two-person race.

Baker said he knows that putting in a strong showing against a single opponent in the runoff will require winning over voters who went for Flanagan and Bobbitt on Tuesday.

"I think I can pull about the same numbers out of [the runoff]--I don't know what'll happen with the other numbers out there," he said. "It'll depend on how many groups I can reach out to, I guess."

At next Tuesday's meeting, the City Council will certify the election results and determine the day of the runoff election.

With about 700 votes cast including the absentee ballots, this year's voter turnout easily topped that of last year's record-setting City Council race, in which 640 ballots were cast.