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11/09/2005:

"Cincinnati Elects First Black Mayor"

CINCINNATI (AP) - Four years after riots tore this city apart, Cincinnati voters elected a black mayor for the first time.

State Sen. Mark Mallory defeated Councilman David Pepper, both Democrats, in a nonpartisan mayoral runoff Tuesday to lead Ohio's third-largest city.

Rioting broke out in 2001 after an unarmed black man was shot and killed by a white police officer trying to make an arrest. While racial tensions have calmed, crime, safety and revitalizing downtown remain leading issues.
guardian.co.uk

Blow for Bush in regional polls

A last-minute intervention by the US president, George Bush, failed to win the governorship of the southern state of Virginia for his Republican party in a night of improved election results for the Democrats.

City and state polls in the so-called off-year election saw Democrats win the governor's office in New Jersey and the defeat of propositions from Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to cap spending and limit the powers of the California state legislature.

The Republicans held City Hall in New York, where Michael Bloomberg, the socially liberal mayor, won re-election, but voters ousted a religiously-inclined Pennsylvania school board that promoted the teaching of intelligent design alongside the theory of evolution.

The nine-person Dover area school board was taken to court by parents over the policy and lost eight of its members in the vote.

The city of San Francisco banned military recruiting in high schools.