Mayor Tanaka re-elected as Kisofukushima town head

Tanaka Katsumi, mayor of Kisofukushima Town in Nagano Prefecture, won by a substantial majority in the mayoral election on March 17. Voter turnout was 84.75 percent, up 2.2 percentage points from the previous election. Tanaka beat Uehara Nobuo, an independent candidate and former member of the town assembly. Tanaka received 3,502 votes (66.9 percent of all votes), more than double the votes Uehara received.

Kisofukushima town, with about 8,000 residents, has been depopulated. For the last 4 years, mayor Tanaka had promoted many projects for health care, industries, environment, culture and sports.

The other candidate had to admit those achievements Tanaka had made for 4 years. In this election, Uehara criticized Tanaka for being a communist. But many local people rejected his criticism, saying that Uehara could not talk about democracy if he criticized communists.

More than 100 people took part in the election in all 33 administrative districts in town. They handed out flyers and talked to people in each district. Then the local people started working spontaneously in order to get more people to support Tanaka. Mayor Tanaka's call on the local people to participate in town politics might have led them to work spontaneously in this election.

Mayor Tanaka talked about his determination for a second term, "The promotion of the town is the biggest task. I would like to keep working with the town people for improving their lives." (end)