Rory Hoskins

As near west suburban Forest Park voters went to the polls Tuesday to vote for mayor and village commissioner, they knew it was the end of an era.

When it all was over, history had been made. Rory Hoskins, a 40-year-old attorney and former village commissioner, became the first African American mayor in the village’s 110-year plus history.

Hoskins, who is married and the father of four children, won a resounding victory with nearly 59 percent of the vote over Chris Harris, 46, a fellow former village commissioner and past mayoral candidate.

Tuesday’s ballot marked the first time in 24 years that Anthony Calderone’s name was not on the ballot. After winning election as a commissioner in 1995, Calderone unseated incumbent mayor Lorraine Popelka in 1999.

In early December the five-term incumbent announced he would not be running for a sixth term. Calderone may have seen the writing on the wall in November, when voters rejected his and the previous board’s legalization of video gambling three years ago.

But after a tenacious two-year effort by Calderone’s supporters to keep a binding referendum off the ballot, anti-video gambling activists won a court ruling, allowing citizens to vote on the issue.

Tuesday’s vote results were a final repudiation by village voters. Calderone narrowly defeated Harris by 113 votes in 2015 in a hotly contested and decidedly nasty contest that Harris characterized as “very ugly, very personal.”

But four years later in December, Calderone threw his support behind Harris and publicly slammed Hoskins. It did not help.

Hoskins came within just 43 votes of unseating 7th District Illinois State Rep. Emanuel “Chris” Welch in four-way primary in 2012.

In November, four village commissioner candidates formed a slate with Hoskins. Of those four — Jon Kubricht, Julianne Bonwit, Jessica Voogd and Mark Boroughf — only Voogd won election. Two incumbents, Joseph Byrnes and Daniel Novak, won re-election. Newcomer Ryan Nero won his commissioner seat with a strong second-place vote showing.

Hoskins will face a number of immediate, pressing challenges, including a $1.9 million budget deficit, a crumbling sewer system that will cost at least $60 million to repair and rebuild, and a struggling retail economy.