BREMERTON — Councilman Greg Wheeler appears poised to unseat two-term Bremerton Mayor Patty Lent for the city's top job, according to election results released Tuesday by the Kitsap County Auditor's Office.

Wheeler had 2,407 votes to Lent's 2,073 in those early returns.

Wheeler, 57, an eight-year member of the City Council, combined shoe-leather door-belling with a grassroots social media campaign to garner 53.6 percent of the vote in early returns. The Democrat believes those efforts, which included knocking on more than 15,000 doors throughout the year, paid off.

"That was the game changer, that was the big separator in this campaign," Wheeler said at his election night party at Hot Java Cafe downtown. "The grassroots effort is what brought it home."

The Pennsylvania Avenue resident, a lifelong Bremertonian who worked at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for nearly three decades, heard most often a refrain from residents that the city is lacking job opportunities. He said he crafted an economic platform to include cutting business and occupation taxes in the city, bolstering staffing in the city's planning department to expedite permitting and utilizing new technologies to make city services more efficient.

"The people have spoken," Wheeler said. "I'm going to be their voice and their mouthpiece."

Wheeler's door-belling campaign also appeared to help him win the primary battle over the summer, which featured Lent as well as Cary Bozeman, former mayor of Bellevue and Bremerton and a current Port of Bremerton commissioner. Wheeler headed the pack with 38 percent of the vote.

Lent said late Tuesday she's not going to concede a race separated by 334 votes, and wants to wait for the remainder of ballots to be counted.

"My spirits are high," she said following an election night party at the Boat Shed in Manette.

Lent, 73, an independent who headed the city for the past eight years, ran on a platform of broadening the city's tax base through annexation and continuing a marketing campaign to attract new residents. The former Kitsap County commissioner defeated former Councilman Will Maupin in 2009 and challenger Todd Best in 2013; she'd changed her mind in the time since to run for a third term because "I didn’t think my work got completed," she said in previous stories.

The Marine Drive resident, who weathered an economic downturn in her initial years as mayor, said previously she's proud of her accomplishments, to include recent road reconstructions like Lebo Boulevard, a consolidation of city hall services downtown and spearheading plans for a public square on Fourth Street named for music icon Quincy Jones. She also lobbied for both new state ferries and the county's fast ferry service and worked closely with the Navy and shipyard as thousands of defense jobs and a second home-ported aircraft carrier were added here during her tenure.

In the campaign, Lent raised more in campaign donations than Wheeler — $52,000 to about $42,000, according to the state's Public Disclosure Commission.

In the evening's City Council races, incumbent Pat Sullivan was defeating challenger Suzanne Griffith with 58 percent for the East Bremerton District 1 seat. Newcomer Kevin Gorman held a commanding lead, 63 percent of votes, over former councilman and fellow Perry Avenue resident Adam Brockus for the District 3 seat, which covers downtown and Manette. City planning commissioner Michael Goodnow was besting newcomer Melissa Kinzer 55-45 percent for the District 5 seat representing the Charleston area.

Wheeler's win means the Bremerton City Council must appoint a new member in January to cover his remaining term in the District 4 seat, which covers Union Hill between Olympic College and the shipyard.