NOVEMBER 9 POST-ELECTION UPDATE:
604 LaFayette residents voted in the Ward 2 race, and a sizable majority preferred Ben Bradford to Dell Montgomery or Keith Talley. Bradford got 349 votes for 58%, a clear win over Montgomery’s 209 votes, or 35%. Talley, who we said wouldn’t be a factor in this race, received support from only 46 voters.
The Underground endorsed Montgomery in this race, but Bradford contributed some excellent ideas to the election and he’ll hopefully be able to make them happen. Since Ward 2 was a vote to fill the uncompleted term of Norm Hodge, Bradford will be sworn in almost immediately and will be part of the City Council during next Monday night’s regular meeting. That means we’ll soon see how many of those ideas will be implemented, or if the young lawyer simply becomes a clone of his useless predecessor.
In the Ward 3 race, former city judge Chris Hollis, the Underground-endorsed candidate, collected 218 of the 618 votes cast, for 35%. That put him well ahead of former councilwoman Judy Meeks, who got support from 178 voters (29%). Stacey Suttle was right behind Meeks with 174. Jerry Rogers, another candidate we said wasn’t making an impact, was chosen by 48 voters.
Since none of the Ward 3 candidates got the legally required 50%-plus-one, the top two finishers will go head to head in a runoff election scheduled for December 6th. Hopefully Hollis will retain his lead over Meeks, but Stacey Suttle voters may circle around Meeks because she’s about as bad an idea as their preferred candidate was. Hollis and Meeks have a starkly different approach to almost every issue, and their December face-off will be the most significant vote this year.
In the five-way Ward 4 race, our endorsed candidate Kevin Robinson surprisingly came in fourth place with only 86 votes. Joe DeBoard was fifth with 47 votes, which makes one wonder if it was the same people who supported Talley and Rogers. In third place, performing slightly better than we anticipated, was former councilman Melvin Bridges, with 121 or 141 votes (23%), depending on which news source you prefer.
News media is also unsure about the top finisher in Ward 4. According to the Catoosa County Messenger, Chris Davis came in second place with 172 votes and Donnie McGaha came out on top with 173. Channel 9 in Chattanooga credits Davis with a winning 177 votes to McGaha’s 173. That’s only a five-vote difference, but it changes the outcome – both outlets need to recheck their numbers and make sure their reports are accurate. Variations between reports on the votes for Bridges and Davis swing the vote count from 599 to 624, which is a significant percentage.
(According to a poll worker, the county’s unofficial count gave Bridges 121 and Davis 172, with one outstanding provisional ballot cast by someone whose eligibility to vote is questionable. If the provisional ballot is deemed valid there will be one additional vote in each race, but it may not go to Davis. If it does he will be exactly tied with McGaha.)
Regardless of which man came out on top, both got 28% of the vote and will have to face each other again on December 6th. Kevin Robinson received the Underground endorsement for this race originally, but Davis was noted as being a close second and has our endorsement for the runoff. McGaha seems to be OK on the surface (a man with goats inside city limits can’t be too bad) but he’s harder to evaluate because he refused to respond to our e-mail interview questions. Either man will probably serve the city well, and the one who doesn’t win will probably run for mayor in 2013, which Robinson has hinted he will also do.
The Underground previously reported that voters who didn’t participate in yesterday’s election would be ineligible to vote in the runoff. That was in error. In LaFayette, at least, there are no restrictions on that type for runoffs. So even if you couldn’t make it to the polls on November 8th, you still have a chance to influence the outcome of the Ward 3 and Ward 4 races. This is far from done.
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