Sarah Thompson is the new mayor of Ludlow following a 4 to 0 vote from city council Thursday evening.
John Hall, the president of the Ludlow Historical Society, announced after Thompson was sworn in that with Thursday’s vote, “Ludlow has elected their first female mayor.”
Thompson was nominated by Councilmember Julie Terry Navarre, and everyone on the council voted to approve her nomination, except Councilmember Abigail Miller, who did not attend the meeting. There was little discussion about the nomination among the council members at the meeting itself.
Thompson did not immediately get sworn in after the vote, choosing to delay the swearing-in until the end of the meeting. This allowed her to cast votes as a council member until the meeting’s conclusion.
About midway through the meeting, Thompson called for unity among the council and the city’s residents, especially in light of the fact that the meeting’s date coincided with the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. She asked everyone to “remember the unity and compassion we once shared as a nation during that time, a spirit I hope we can return to soon.”
Other than one resident who inquired about the process for filling the now-open city council seat, no residents spoke during the public comments section of the meeting. Still, the meeting was well attended, and people cheered for Thompson following Hall’s announcement.
The vote comes as a result of the resignation of former Mayor Chris Wright at the end of August, who stepped away from his duties, he said, to focus on his health.
“This has been an extremely difficult decision,” Wright wrote in his resignation letter, which was posted to his Facebook page. “I have been doing my best to battle some health issues for the last several months.”
Wright said he expects to make a full recovery, but that he needed someone else to finish out his term.
In the event a mayor resigns, the city council must vote in a replacement within 30 days, or the power to appoint a replacement falls to the governor. Anyone who’s lived in Ludlow for at least a year and is 21 years old can be a mayor’s nominee in such a situation. Council members can nominate themselves, but they can’t vote for themselves.
Now that Thompson has become mayor, the council will need to follow the same process to fill her former council seat. Naturally, council members cannot nominate themselves to serve on the council. Power to appoint a replacement will likewise fall to the governor if the council doesn’t fill the seat in 30 days. Criteria for council nomination is the same as a mayoral nomination.
The dynamic on the city council has been historically fraught and at times characterized by conflict and scandal. Although there were no fireworks at the meeting itself, conflicts on social media between residents, current council members, and former council members occurred in the lead-up to the meeting.
In fact, at a special meeting the day after Wright resigned, former Councilmember Lori Davenport was arrested and charged with disrupting government operations following several expletive-laden outbursts. That meeting focused on whether the city council should come to a settlement with City Administrator Scott Smith over pension benefits. Davenport did not attend the meeting this week.
Smith said he would be meeting with the new mayor in the coming weeks to discuss administrative matters in the city and ensure they were “all on the same page.”
Thompson will finish out the remainder of the mayoral term, which ends on the last day of 2026. Elections for the position will proceed normally next year.