Both prior and subsequent to this, partisan direct elections have been held to sleet the city's mayor.[5] On December 3, 1935, by a 14-6 vote, the city council chose Thomas J. Spellacy to finish Pilgard's term in office.By a 15-4 vote, the city council chose Edward N. Allen to finish Moylan's term in office.[18] Hartford's Republican Town Chairman Joseph P. Mozzicato attempted to make sure no Republican nominee would run for the mayoralty, seeing the mayoral election as a losing race, and preferring to spend the party's money focussing on the City Council election.[25] Milner defeated five-term incumbent mayor George A. Athanson in the Democratic primary.Incumbent mayor George A. Athanson won the initial primary held on September 8, defeating runner-up Milner by a mere 94 votes.[27] One Hartford Courant poll ahead of the primary had shown Athanson leading Milner by a much greater 14-point margin (35% to 21%).[27] Ludgin, elected in 1977 to The Hartford City Council as an outsider, had made many enemies and put-off many voters through his aggressive leadership style in his two years in office.[27] Unlike in 1979, the city's Democratic committee endorsed Athanson for reelection ahead of the primary.[30][26][29] In the rerun of the primary, Milner defeated incumbent mayor George A. Athanson, in large part, due to a very strong showing in the city's North End.[27] Milner continued to receive strong support from the city's North Side, winning 90% of the roughly 9,500 votes cast there in the general election.Incumbent Carrie Saxon Perry was reelected to a third consecutive term, defeating a challenger in the Democratic primary, and running unopposed in the general election.Perry's supporters, at a rally featuring Jackson, distributed flyers which implied that Peters would undo the last decade of progress for the city's black populace.[40] She also received the endorsement of John DeStefano Jr., the Democratic nominee in the coinciding New Haven mayoral election.In the three most predominantly white precincts on the city's South End, Peters won 90% of the vote.Incumbent mayor Michael P. Peters defeated city councilwoman Elizabeth Horton Sheff in the Democratic primary.Activist Kenneth Mink, who had been an announced challenger of incumbent Mike Peters, failed to file on time the proper forms to run against him in the Democratic primary.[56] Ahead of the primary, Eddie A. Perez received the endorsement of the city's Democratic Party organization.Disqualified from ballot A large focus of the primary campaign was how Perez had become so dominant in the city's politics.[61] Perez apologized for the home-improvement arrangement, and placed one of the parking lot deals back out to bid.[61] However, fourteen years earlier, independent Michael P. Peters, who served as mayor from 1993 through 2001, had first won election as a petitioning candidate in the general election, after having failed to win the Democratic primary over then-incumbent Carrie Saxon Perry.[62] Since launching his candidacy in January 2007, Perez had vastly out fundraised and outspent his opponents, raising $593,000 by the end of October.[citation needed] Segarra also became the second hispanic individual to be elected mayor of Hartford, after Perez.The Republican Party did not nominate a candidate, and instead cross-endorsed incumbent Democrat Pedro Segarra.Hartford is a highly Democratic city; therefore, Bronin was anticipated to win the general election.[79] Aaron Lewis, founder and director of the Scribe's Institute,[86] changed his party affiliation from Democratic to Libertarian few months before the election and ran as their nominee.Arunan Arulampalam was endorsed by both the Hartford Democratic Party and outgoing Mayor Bronin ahead of the primary.