Mayor Ray Kimble, Councilman Kevin Kennedy and Charlie Hood won at the voting booth last night in their Bellville loss. VBMs killed them, promoting an old ally to try to take credit, even as the victorious campaign rained scorn.

The entrenched Richard Yanuzzi crew appeared to claim that they set up a vote by mail effort for victor Michael Melham, engineering an astounding 700 votes cast by mail in Belleville, or 10% of all the votes cast.

Though Melham told his campaign Facebook followers that he had not been associated with Yanuzzi in 16 years, that didn’t stop Yanuzzi (above), jammed up on tax fraud charges, and allowed to enter a pre-trial intervention program two weeks ago, from joining in the Melham celebration (not at headquarters) with a full-fledged Facebook ham-out.

“He had no part of it whatsoever,” said Melham spokesman Phil Swibinski, who said Melham scored the VBM win himself with software from his own company.

The campaign completely condemned the cigar-chomping posture of Yannuzi, saying he was trying to take credit for something in which he took no part.

“The story of the night is that Melham did something totally unprecedented with VBMs here through hard work and innovative technology. Yanuzzi was a total non-factor in this election.”

Melham literally did mail attacking Kimble for appointing Yanuzzi to the library board.

“He and Melham have no relationship at this point,” Swibinski added.