Newcomers will join City Council
Marilyn Alexander, David Cox and Bob Lera won the three available seats on the Lexington City Council Tuesday evening, defeating two incumbents.
“I am just thrilled,” Cox said of his victory. “Things have just gone wonderfully [tonight].”
Lera secured the highest number of votes at 27 percent. Cox and Alexander were close behind with 25 percent and 21 percent, respectively.
“This was not a one-man show,” said Lera of his win. “There were a whole lot of people that got involved in helping me work out the details of this campaign.”
Both Cox and Lera spent the drizzly, grey Tuesday morning at the polls greeting voters. Cox said that may have helped him against the two incumbents, Jack Page and Ron Smith.
Page received only 14 percent of the vote, Smith 11 percent.
“These are people that have served with great distinction,” said Cox of the incumbents. “But they have been on the quiet side. I hope that their contributions to Lexington will be appreciated.”
A third incumbent, Tim Golden, was not seeking re-election.
For Page and Smith, there is still hope for a seat on the council.
Mimi Elrod’s win for mayor means a fourth council seat will now be available. Her City Council seat will be vacated at the start of the next council term in January. The council will appoint a Lexington resident to the open position. That resident could well be one of the losers from tonight’s results.
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 re-election until their terms expire in 2010.
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.
“My intent over the next four years is to ask questions and listen when people talk to me,” said Lera.
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.
Bob Lera talks about his city council campaign
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