Jordanna Mallach smiles from a NATO base in Kosovo after winning the Harrietstown supervisor election on Tuesday night, Nov. 2, 2021 — Wednesday morning, on her time. (Provided photo — Jordanna Mallach)

SARANAC LAKE — Jordanna Mallach, a Harrietstown councilwoman, appears to have clinched the town’s superintendent seat, unofficial election results show.

When the election results were announced on Tuesday evening in Harrietstown, Mallach was more than 4,000 miles away in Kosovo, stationed at a NATO base. It was 2 a.m. there, but soldiers from the unit she works with stayed up to hear the results and celebrate with champagne.

With absentee ballots still to be counted, Mallach, a Democrat, was the top vote-getter in the race for Harrietstown supervisor during the early voting period and on Election Day, garnering 755 votes. Her opponent Bob Bevilacqua, Harrietstown’s supervisor from January 2013 to May 2014, got 524 votes. He ran on the Republican and Conservative lines.

The Franklin County Board of Elections issued 104 absentee ballots to Harrietstown voters, not enough for Bevilacqua to overcome Mallach’s in-person vote total.

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A supervisor abroad

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Mallach is currently deployed with the Army as part of NATO’s Task Force Mansfield. She’ll take office in January and return to town in March. She’ll be away for three months of her term.

Mallach had to get approval from the Pentagon to attend town board meetings while overseas. She’ll continue using Zoom, extending online attendance of board meetings that started during the pandemic.

She works in a “secure environment,” so she’s not able to keep her cellphone on her, but Mallach said with the six-hour time difference, she takes her lunch break around when the day starts here and finishes up her work day in the middle of the work day here. That’s when she responds to emails and phone calls.

Mallach said she believes government should be transparent and accessible. She plans to start regular, public Zoom sessions, when she will be online for a couple hours a couple of times a month and people can speak to her or ask questions about the town.

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An international audience

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Mallach was on a Zoom call with her husband, Joe Gladd — who was at the town hall — her parents, and was surrounded by fellow NATO soldiers from around the world, who showed up with a bottle of champagne.

“Her whole unit showed up to support her for either way it went,” Gladd wrote in a text. “They all showed up, surprising her … and stayed with her and celebrated. … It was amazing!”

She wasn’t allowed to campaign while overseas. She said the past couple months have been tense for her.

“Bob Bevilacqua is well-respected and well-established in the community,” Mallach said Wednesday. “He was a formidable opponent for sure. By no means did I ever think I had it in the bag.”

But she was busy with her job, too. Mallach said NATO moved Afghan refugees through Kosovo after the U.S. military withdrew from the country in August. She was handling the logistics of this move. Mallach had been deployed to Afghanistan before and last month, Gladd said she knew translators and others who were trying to leave the country as the Taliban took over.

On Election Day, she stayed up late to wait for the results. Around midnight they started running out of things to do to distract themselves, so they played cards until 8 p.m. EST, when her sister, Leora Mallach, won her election to the Framingham, Massachusetts City Council.

“It was just a super exciting night for my parents,” she said.

She went to bed at 3:30 a.m., her time, and woke for her shift at 7 a.m. On Wednesday, 8 p.m., her time, she was in her pajamas in bed, resting up.

Mallach thanked town councilwoman Tracey Schrader for campaigning on her behalf. Schrader won reelection on Tuesday night. Johnny Williams was also elected to the council. Mallach said she talked with Williams before she left and thinks he’s committed to the community.

Mallach said having Williams and Adam Harris on the ballot likely attracted a group of voters who might not have participated in the past.