Conservative Zoe Metcalfe has won the by-election to replace a police commissioner who resigned after making comments about Sarah Everard’s murder.
But less than 14% of the electorate voted in the election.
The county councillor was elected North Yorkshire police, fire & crime commissioner in the second round of voting, defeating Labour candidate Emma Scott-Spivey.
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Fellow Conservative Philip Allott, who was elected in May, resigned last month, hours after losing a no-confidence vote triggered by what he admitted were “absolutely ridiculous” and “pathetic” comments in a radio interview.
More than 1,000 complaints were made after he said women should be more “streetwise” about powers of arrest and that Ms Everard should not have “submitted” to arrest by her killer Wayne Couzens, a serving police officer.
The Prime Minister was said to have been outraged by the comments, seen as being worse as Ms Everard’s family live in York, and they were considered by many as victim-blaming.
Second round victory
Ms Metcalfe secured 41,760 votes in the second round, with Ms Scott-Spivey gaining 26,895 in an election where the turnout was just 13.94%, down from 25.33% in May.
In total, 5.5% of the electorate gave her their first vote.
There were three other candidates knocked out in the first round, with independent Keith Tordoff gaining 14,988 votes, Liberal Democrat James Barker 9,499 and Sarah Barham-Brown of the Women’s Equality Party 8,837.
Ms Metcalfe told YorkMix Radio what her priorities were: “For me it’s about improving safety for everyone in North Yorkshire and York, but in particular safety of all women and girls is one of my top priorities.
“I’d really like to expand the support available to victims and survivors. And I want to introduce preventative measures to stop the violence happening in the first place.
“A really good example of that would be to commission outside agencies to work with teachers in delivering healthy relationship education.
“Prevention is really important. I’d also like to increase the pathways to report domestic abuse and crimes and I’d really like to start an initiative to commission domestic abuse workers in A&Es.”