Rohli Booker Wins 6th District City Council Seat

By Marin Murphy

VP of the FWCS Board of School Trustees Rohli Booker will fill the 6th District City Council seat.

Booker has been named to fill the vacant 6th District City Council seat after former councilwoman Sharon Tucker took on the role of mayor in April.

The final list of candidates included former Allen County Democratic Party (ACDP) Chair Michael Bynum, Adams Township Trustee Denita Washington, Delois (Dee) McKinley-Eldridge, and Larry Gist, former president of the NAACP’s Fort Wayne chapter.

The winner only needed 10 +1 votes out of the 18 precinct chairs present to vote, to win the 6th District City Council seat. Booker was able to win in one round, winning over half the votes.

“We’re excited to have Councilwoman Booker join the City Council and represent the 6th District,” Allen County Democratic Party Chairman Derek Camp said in a press release. “She has been a leader for our city on the FWCS School Board and will bring that energy and track record to the city.”

Qualifications for candidacy were the same as the requirements to file for office on the ballot: a one-year residency in Fort Wayne’s 6th city council district, no felony convictions, and the two most recent primaries the candidate voted in must have been a Democratic primary.

The process for Saturday’s caucus started at 10:00 a.m. when each candidate had up to five minutes to speak. The first round of voting immediately followed; precinct chairs filled out paper ballots that then had to be counted by tellers, who were split into two teams to cross-check each other’s counts and make sure the numbers were accurate.

After the first round of voting, Derek Camp, the Chair for the Allen County Democratic Party, announced how many votes each candidate had. With Booker receiving more than half the votes in the first round, no additional rounds were needed and she won the council seat.

Details on the swearing-in ceremony for the winner of the caucus have not been announced, but it is expected to happen early to mid-next week.

Booker’s position on the FWCS School Board will be filled by board members in a vote. Booker was voted onto the FWCS school board in 2020 after the passing of the previous fourth district seat Jordan Lebamoff passed away.