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After a year long campaign, Ben Nelson becomes Bonita Springs next Mayor. Watch »

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After 353 days of campaigning, it’s official: Ben Nelson will be the next mayor of Bonita Springs.

Nelson was gathered with supporters at the Trianon Hotel in Bonita Springs on Tuesday night as Councilman John Spear read off the results from the runoff election.

There were cheers, shouts, whistles and hugs all around.

Nelson had won 4,364 votes, for nearly 63 percent of the 6,935 cast. His opponent, incumbent Jay Arend: 2,571 votes, for 37 percent.

The results, Nelson said, were a “tribute to all the people who have worked so hard.”

“I’m just so happy that people who have known me 40 and 50 years, and people who have known me for months, have just put so much into this campaign,” he said.

If some supporters said they were thrilled, others said they were simply relieved.

“I thought it was going to a really, really close thing,” former Councilman John Warfield said. “Obviously, the voters are speaking: it’s time for a change.”

Not every voter spoke: turnout was at about 34 percent among the 21,321 registered voters in the city.

That’s lower than it was Jan. 29, when more than 12,000 people voted in what was then a four-way mayoral race.

In that vote, too, Nelson was the top vote-getter — winning nearly 47 percent of the vote to Arend’s 33 percent — but that was not enough to avoid a runoff election.

Given those initial results, Nelson supporter Darryl Discher said it was no surprise his candidate had won.

But Nelson’s win Tuesday does buck a history of runoff election surprises in Bonita Springs.

In 2000, for instance, Paul Pass finished second among a field of seven candidates, then went on to become the city’s first mayor, and Nelson first won a seat on council after trailing in an initial vote.

His win Tuesday marks one true first for the Bonita Springs: the first time anyone has been elected to three terms in city government.

Nelson, 53, the owner of a marine contracting business and a Bonita Springs resident for most of his life, has already served on City Council for eight years.

He won the District 6 seat following the first city election in 2000, and his second term in the seat ended in February.

Until two weeks after the runoff election results are certified, Arend will continue to serve as mayor.

Certification is scheduled to happen Friday morning at the main Lee County Elections Office.

The first regular council meeting Nelson will preside over will be May 7.

Nelson has campaigned on offering a “more tactful” style of leadership to the council, and he said to expect some changes.

“I always seek out the positive,” he said. “We’re going to carry on. Some programs will change. Some policies will change.”

He also said the “tenor” of city meetings will change.

With the election over, Nelson said he does not plan to dwell on divisiveness the campaign brought out, though he described the long contest among the mayoral candidates as “difficult” for many.

But if the campaign volunteers outside precinct 166 turn out to be representative, city residents may put election season behind them soon enough.

Lois MacDonald, 83, voted the first day of early voting, casting her ballot for her neighbor, Arend.

“He’s just been so devoted,” she said. “He really loved the job.”

Tuesday, she had a job of her own: keeping her post as a campaign volunteer in front of the polling place at IronStone Bank. MacDonald sat in a lawn chair, wearing her “Stay with Jay” button and thanking voters as they came and went.

A win for Nelson would mean “Ben’s known more,” she said, but either candidate would have made a good mayor.

And for that, “we’re lucky,” she said. “Look at me. I’m sitting next to a Nelson person.”

It was true.

The woman in the lawn chair just inches away from MacDonald’s own was Lynn Becker, 74, a Nelson supporter, who had no problem spending time with someone her husband, Richard Becker, described as a member of “Jay’s Army.”

“What am I supposed to do, sit with my back to her?” Lynn Becker asked.

Instead, they spent time talking and joking together — something they said they’d do after the election is over.

Either way, they said — just a few hours before the polls closed — the city wouldn’t be the one to lose.