Hobbled by a federal investigation and apparently rejected by residents at the polls, Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard lost her bid for a second term as mayor, with her challenger saying a “new day” was dawning.

Trustee Jason House declared victory over Henyard Tuesday night in the Democratic primary, telling supporters the results mark “an end to a dark day in Dolton.”

House received 3,896 votes, or 88%,to 536 votes for Henyard, according to unofficial results from the Cook County clerk’s office. The winner of the mayoral primary will face Independent candidate Casundra Hopson-Jordan in the April 1 election.

The results won’t be official until a canvass by the county clerk.

“The community spoke loud and clear tonight,” House told supporters. “We faced four years of intimidation, four years of failure.”

“Today marks an end to a dark day in Dolton,” he said.

Henyard, seen by some as a breath of fresh air when she was elected mayor nearly four years ago, was not available to comment Wednesday on the results.

Toward the last hour of Tuesday’s election, however, the self-proclaimed “Supermayor” and “people’s mayor” was urging supporters via social media to back her “before we make history once again in Dolton.”

Henyard, on her Facebook page, asked residents to support her and candidates she was running with just before the polls closed Tuesday.

“I do want the opportunity to govern my town,” she said.

Whoever is elected, however, will inherit a village with an image tarnished by alleged financial mismanagement, a budget deficit and financial audits forced by the state because Dolton hasn’t filed necessary financial documents.

The village still doesn’t have a budget for the fiscal year that will end April 30, about the time a new mayor is sworn in.

House and trustees have said the village will need to make significant spending cuts, including likely layoffs of village workers, to achieve a balanced budget.

Village Clerk Alison Key doesn’t face a challenger in the April election, and was the apparent winner in the Tuesday primary over clerk candidate Tannika Hughes, who was backed by Henyard.

Unofficial totals showed Key had 3,490 votes, compared to 871 for Hughes.

“Dolton is a great community but we are not looked at very well because of the leadership that was in place, but we erased that,” Key said at a victory rally Tuesday night for the House-led slate.

“I want to be proud to say I am a Dolton resident,” the clerk said.

Trustee candidates running with House also fared well. Three trustee seats were in play in the primary.

Incumbent Trustee Brittney Norwood led a field of seven candidates with 3,554 votes, while Trustee Kiana Belcher had 3,414 and former trustee Edward “Ed” Steave had 3,335 votes, according to unofficial results.

Steave lost his bid for reelection last year.

The trustee candidates running with Henyard were well behind, with Joslyn King at 653 votes, Linda Terrell at 618, and Vanessa R. Wesco with 536 votes, unofficial results show.

Charles Rayburn, running for trustee unaffilliated with either slate, had 375 votes.

Belcher said at Tuesday’s victory rally, held in a vacant storefront in what had previously been the Value Village shopping center just south of Village Hall, the apparent primary win is a step forward.

“Right now starts the transition of transparency, accountability, holding us accountable,” she told supporters.

Belcher said the tasks the lay in front of her and the board are going to be difficult.

“This is not going to be an easy four years for us,” she said. “We’ve got to unravel a whole lot of stuff we don’t know about.”

Acknowledging the struggle with Henyard and fighting that took place between the mayor and trustees, Belcher said she and fellow trustees often felt defeated.

“It only made us come together, it only made us stand together,” she said.

Longtime Dolton resident Dan Lee said he was pleased with the outcome.

“The will of the people has been met,” he said. “We are definitely on our way.”

Lee, however, said much has to be done to restore the village’s reputation and fragile financial condition.

“This is a big step, but we have a lot more to do,” he said.

Thornton Township Trustee Christopher Gonzalez said the results showing House’s apparent primary win were overwhelming.

“The people spoke, louder than I expected,” he said. “They yelled.”

Gonzalez said when Henyard was first elected, “she had all the ingredients for success, but she did everything the opposite.”

“At the beginning she had the board and it should have been about working together, working things out,” he said.

Gonzalez said that the support for House and candidates running with him was pretty much a grassroots effort.

“The movement was organic,” he said Tuesday night. “The people said ‘No,’ enough is enough.”

House initially supported and ran with Henyard in 2021. Also running with Henyard at that time were Belcher, Norwood and Key, all of whom were elected.

Henyard would describe the group as a “dream team.”

Trustee Andrew Holmes was reelected last year, as was Trustee Tammie Brown. Stanley Brown was elected to his first term and is not up for reelection.

Henyard has been under federal investigation since at least last spring, when subpoenas were delivered to Dolton Village Hall and Thornton Township offices. Henyard is township supervisor but faces a challenge in getting elected to a full term, having been blocked from being part of the Democratic primary for the job.

House and other trustees have alleged financial mismanagement on the part of Henyard’s administration, and hired former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to act as a special investigator, probing village finances, among other tasks.

Presented to the public in two segments, Lightfoot’s report showed the village went from having healthy budget balances to a multimillion-dollar deficit since Henyard was elected mayor.

Her report also uncovered expensive trips taken by Henyard and her allies, including visits to a conference in Las Vegas that was intended to bring back business opportunities for Dolton.

Henyard said there was no evidence the two Vegas trips produced any tangible economic benefits for the village.

In the lead-up to Tuesday’s primary, campaign finance reports showed Henyard running a self-financed campaign.

State election board filings showed Henyard hadn’t received a campaign contribution since the spring of 2023, and recorded no money coming in for all of last year from outside sources apart from loans she has made to her committee.

The most recent loan, of $25,000, came Nov. 12, and Henyard also made a loan of $20,000 last March, according to campaign finance reports.

At the end of 2024, her committee had nearly $89,000 available to spend, and debts of $58,000, all of which came from loans Henyard made to her Friends organization.

House’s election committee showed $4,000 in donations in December, including $1,000 from Key and donations of $1,000 each from Steave, in October and November.

The law firm Odelson, Murphey, Frazier & McGrath, legislative counsel to village trustees, contributed $1,500 in October, according to state records.

Two of the principals of the firm, Burt Odelson and Michael McGrath, were at the Clean House victory celebration Tuesday, posing with photos with the elected officials.