Pat Council, the city recreation direction and ward Democratic Party chair, tonight beat Terrance Bankston in the South Ward runoff election.

Council is a key ally of Mayor Ras Baraka, and ran with the mayor’s blessing.

The unofficial vote tally was:

Bankston, who worked in City Hall during the Cory Booker years, ran a strong challenge but ultimately ran into the reality of too much Baraka political potency in the mayor’s home ward.

Council grew up in the South Ward as the son of a single mother, and on the proving ground of sport – specifically the baseball field – honed his competitive edge. It was in that other grounded place, the church, that he found perspective and a commitment to the sacred. Over the years, that purposeful foundation of religion and sport and family, values instilled in him by his mother and brothers, led Council to politics, with hopes of a deepened service to his community.

Father and husband, director of the city’s recreation program with deep roots in the school system, reverend pastor of St. John Baptist Church, former School Board Member, chairman of the South Ward Democratic Organization, and community activist going back to his participation in the Million Man March in 1995, and at-large candidate for council in 2014, Council as a member of the Baraka Team now seeks the South Ward seat occupied by retired Councilman John Sharpe James, who backs him as his successor.

Earlier this year, with his family and political lieutenants around him, an energized Council sat down with InsiderNJ at his campaign headquarters on Bergen Street, in the thriving heart of the South Ward, this inveterate political organism onto itself, home to the ward candidate and his longtime friend and ally Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.

“The South Ward has been a good place for family orientation; a good place to grow families, a place for families to reclaim themselves,” said Council, the favorite in a crowded May 10th South Ward field, not only by virtue of his affiliation with Baraka, but also because of his own roots and preparation. “We families have come together through high school sports, but more importantly, backyard conversations of where we want to see the next generation. If we’re not doing this to forecast for our children, then we are in this for the wrong reason. We are people centric. The south ward is the vernacular of how we came up sharing, growing, learning, developing, instructing.”

The top vote getter on May 10th, Council bested Bankston tonight, too.