The D.C. Council election on Tuesday marked the first time in 16 years that a Republican has not held a seat on the D.C. Council.It was a victorious day for incumbent Democrat Kwame Brown and independent Michael Brown, who both won seats in the D.C. Council Tuesday.ichael, who defeated incumbent Republican Carol Schwartz, waged a write-in campaign as an independent after having lost the Democratic primary in September.Kwame Brown claimed victory with more than 47 percent of the vote, while Michael Brown made a second-place showing with nearly 20 percent.David Schwartzman, who ran as the Statehood Green candidate, received 5 percent of the votes. Other candidates for the 2008 D.C. Council Election included Republican Patrick Mara, who captured a little more than 10 percent of the vote, and independent candidates Dee Hunter and Mark Long, who accrued 2 percent and 4 percent of the votes, respectively.The results were not initially released until 10:30 p.m., two and a half hours after polls closed, and the unofficial outcomes were announced after midnight.The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics wanted to be sure the votes were accurate following confusion in the September primaries when initial results included thousands of phantom write-in votes that were mistakenly added to the tallies. The D.C. BOEE also had problems with approximately 126 absentee ballots, which omitted the council contest for the resident’s area and instead included a vote about the school board in another area.In other local races, incumbents Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4), Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7) and Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) all won reelection.”