Although Port Orchard Mayor Lary Coppola carefully distanced himself from the race between incumbent City Councilman Fred Chang and Bay Street restaurateur Amy Igloi-Matsuno, there’s little question many voters still believed he had a preference for the challenger.

If so, it’s possible to interpret Chang’s rather comfortable re-election on Tuesday night as a rebuke for the mayor.

But that seems a bit of a stretch.

In hindsight, it’s more likely that Igloi-Matsuno just didn’t do enough to separate herself philosophically from her opponent.

While Chang clearly ran on his reputation as Coppola’s most frequent dissenting vote on the council, Igloi-Matsuno lacked a signature issue.

Ironically, in working so hard to downplay her allegiance to Coppola’s agenda and position herself as an independent thinker, it’s possible she denied herself what might have been a persuasive selling point.

Meanwhile, with respect to Roger Zabinski’s surprisingly easy victory over Lynn Horton in the race for a seat on the Port of Bremerton’s board of directors, we see it as a symbolic triumph for South Kitsap.

Horton, the former mayor of Bremerton, won easily in the August primary — when only residents of her home district could vote.

But in the general election, with South Kitsap voters also included in the mix, Horton’s ties to the city across the inlet cost her in the eyes of those convinced Port Orchard has traditionally gotten short shrift from the port.

Whether, in fact, Zabinski is any improvement remains to be seen.

And given his popularity with the forces that fought so hard for SEED and other port misadventures, we have our doubts.

But it’s crystal clear what message the voters over here were trying to send. Hopefully Zabinski received it.