By SHARON O’MALLEY
A University of Maryland (UMD) chaplain won the March 11 election to fill the vacant District 3 College Park City Council seat.
Ray Ranker, who tallied 338 out of 504 votes cast in the special election, beat lifelong Old Town resident Michael Meadow, who won 97 votes, and UMD student Gannon Sprinkle, who took 69, according to preliminary results announced by the Board of Elections Supervisors on March 12.
The board will certify the results on March 14 and present them to the city council on March 18.
“I’m grateful that people entrusted me with this responsibility,” said Ranker, who will take the oath of office on March 18 before the regular city council meeting. “There are just a lot of amazing people who are, in so many different ways, making our community stronger, more connected, better. I’m excited to build on that.”
Ranker, a longtime College Park Estates resident who leads UMD’s Lutheran Campus Ministry, said he expects to dive right into city budget planning during the first month or so of his term, which will end in November. He may choose to run for re-election during the city’s regular council election, which occurs every two years.
At that time, voters will select a mayor and fill all eight city council seats. None of the incumbent councilmembers has declared as a candidate for that election yet.
Ranker will fill the seat left vacant by former District 3 Councilmember Stuart Adams, who resigned in January, citing family responsibilities.
“I can really advocate for the kinds of changes that folks in [District 3] want to see reflected in the annual budget that’s coming up,” Ranker told College Park Here & Now. “It’s one of the best opportunities to help reflect our city’s values and hopes through how we spend our money, [and] to be good stewards of that process.”
Ranker said he plans to reach out to Meadow, a federal government engineer, and Sprinkle, a junior government and politics major, “to help move College Park forward together.”
He thanked his opponents “for their willingness to run and put themselves out there and put their ideas out there, and I think they each have a lot to contribute.”
Ranker, 42, previously served for seven years as the president of the College Park Estates Civic Association and on a city commission tasked with recommending term lengths for elected officials. He made an unsuccessful run for the Maryland House of Delegates in 2018, and ran for city council on a platform of inclusivity and citizen involvement.
