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Election set today for vacant Foster council seat

01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, July 8, 2008

By Philip Marcelo

Journal Staff Writer

FOSTER — A special election today will determine who takes the Town Council seat vacated when Harold R. Shippee abruptly resigned in March.

Democrat Roger Leroy Hawes, Republican Gordon E. Rogers, and independent Jonathan T. Vorro will face off with the winner serving out Shippee’s term, which expires in December.

The winner will also be eligible for reelection to a full, two-year term in November. All three have already declared their candidacies for the November election.

Hawes, 77, of 33A Cucumber Hill Rd., is a retired postman. He is a member of the town Democratic Party and is its endorsed candidate. He served on the Town Charter commission in the early 1980s. This is his first run for public office. He is married with four grown children.

Rogers, 43, of Cucumber Hill Rd., is the vice chairman of the town Republican Party and is its endorsed candidate. He ran unsuccessfully for a council seat in 2006. He is married to Heidi W. Rogers, a former council president.

Rogers is the owner of GTH Bobcat Services, of Foster, and the former Rogers Dairy Farm. He is a lieutenant in the Moosup Valley Fire Department and the town Ambulance Corps. He is also a private in the South Foster Fire Company and served on the town’s Economic Development Advisory Committee from 2003 to 2006.

Vorro, 36, of 23 Balcom Rd., is an engineer. A Ponaganset High School graduate, he attended the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, where he earned a degree in electrical engineering. He is married. This is his first run for public office.

Shippee, 67, resigned three months into his 12th year on the council. The former council president and former chief of the Foster Center Fire Company has said he stepped down because his inquiries and recommendations about the Department of Public Works were ignored by the council leadership.

Voting info: Distinct 1 votes at South Foster Fire Station at 5 Mount Hygeia Rd.; District 2 votes at Moosup Valley Fire Station at 55 Mooseup Valley Rd. Polling places open at 7 a.m. and close at 9 p.m.

pmarcelo@projo.com