New faces for Lexington City Council
Challengers Marilyn Alexander, David Cox and Bob Lera won the three available seats on Lexington City Council tonight, beating both incumbents running, Jack Page and Ron Smith.
Lera, Alexander, and Cox won their first terms on the council. A third incumbent, Tim Golden, was not seeking re-election.
Lera is retired and had served on the Lexington Planning Commission. Cox is also retired and had made two unsuccessful bids for the Virginia General Assembly. Alexander is a longtime Lexington resident and member of the Lexington School Board.
Page is a professor of civil engineering at Virginia Military Institute and was seeking his second term on the Council. Smith, director of facilities services at Kendal at Lexington, was also looking for a second term.
Two other council members, Jim Gianniny and Frank Friedman, will not be up for reelection until their terms expire in 2010.
That also would have been the case with the remaining incumbent, Mimi Elrod. But with Elrod’s election as mayor, her City Council seat will be vacated at the start of the next council term in January. The council will look to appoint a Lexington resident to the open position. That resident could well be one of the losers from tonight’s City Council results.
In this year’s election, many of the local candidates relied on word-of-mouth methods to drive their campaigns. Voters took to their own initiative to learn about each candidate.
Mayoral and City Council elections are held in every even numbered year. Elected Council members take office Jan. 1 and serve a four-year term.
The City Council election is nonpartisan and at-large, which means voters did not see any party affiliations on the ballot. Voters could select up to three candidates, but the voting machine prevented them from selecting more. Selecting only one name gave that candidate a greater chance of winning a seat on the council.
In the past, elections have lacked the element of excitement present in this year’s race.
In 2006, candidates Elrod, Gianniny and Friedman handily beat out two competitors.
For the 2004 Lexington City Council race, election results were even more anticlimactic. Candidates Golden, Page and Smith ran uncontested.
Meanwhile, results are still pending for the Glasgow Town Council elections. Tracy Shafer and Roger Funkhouser challenged incumbents Mike Turner and Roberta Lyle in the race for three open seats.
Produced by
Washington and Lee
journalism students.
Lead Supervisors:
Prof. Brian
Richardson
Prof. Indira Somani
Editing supervisor:
Prof. Pamela Luecke
Reporting Supervisors:
Prof. Doug Cumming
Prof. Indira Somani
Technical supervisor: Michael Todd