Martinsville Bulletin, Inc.
P. O. Box 3711
204 Broad Street
Martinsville, Virginia 24115
276-638-8801
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| Newcomers unseat council incumbent |
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Wednesday, May 7, 2008
By MICKEY POWELL - Bulletin Staff Writer
City voters elected two political newcomers to the Martinsville City Council on Tuesday as well as re-elected an incumbent — the current mayor — to a second four-year term, unofficial election results show.
Kimble Reynolds Jr., who has served as mayor for the past two years, was the top vote-getter with 1,361 votes. He was elected as a councilman. In Martinsville, mayors are not elected directly by voters, as they are in many cities, but selected by the council.
Political newcomers Mark Stroud and Danny Turner also were elected to the council. Stroud was second with 1,188 votes, and Turner was third with 904.
James Clark, the current vice mayor, lost his bid for a second term on the council, garnering only 842 votes — the fewest of all the candidates.
Voter turnout in the election was 23.7 percent.
Three council seats were up for grabs. Those were the ones now being held by Reynolds, Ron Ferrill and Clark. Ferrill did not seek re-election.
Stroud and Turner will begin serving on the council in July.
Another political newcomer, James Crigger Sr., was fourth with 885 votes.
Reynolds was the top finisher in four of Martinsville’s seven voting precincts, including the central absentee precinct. Stroud got the most votes in three.
Turner was not the top vote-getter, or even the runner-up, in any precinct.
“Actually, I thought I’d do better than I did,” he said. But as the election results were tallied, at times they were “too close for comfort,” he said. In the end, there were only 19 votes separating him and Crigger.
Having been elected, he thinks “people want some change” in leadership in city government, he said.
Stroud, a city courtroom bailiff who unsuccessfully ran for a council seat four years ago, said he is “very humbled, very blessed” by his victory.
He attributed his victory largely to being able to go door-to-door and meet voters. He could not do that in 2004, he recalled, because he was helping care for a sick relative then.
Turner, a retired UPS carrier who now runs a digital imaging company, said he did not do any door-to-door campaigning.
All of the council candidates “put in a lot of hours and a lot of hard work” while campaigning, said Reynolds, a lawyer in private practice.
“I feel very privileged” to have received the most votes and that “people have confidence in me ... to have me serve another four years,” he said.
Each candidate spoke highly of the others following the election.
Both Crigger and Clark said they are not likely to run for the council again. When Crigger congratulated Turner on his win Tuesday night, Turner urged Crigger to run again in a future election.
“I have the utmost respect for all of” the winners, as well as Clark, Crigger said.
He added that he “ran an honest campaign and did everything” possible to win, and his loss was “just the luck of the draw.”
Clark attributed his defeat mainly to the public’s displeasure with decisions made by the council during his term to pursue purchasing the local Adelphia cable television franchises — an effort that failed and cost the city roughly $700,000 — and enter into long-term contracts with American Municipal Power-Ohio for the purchase of wholesale electricity.
He voted against the latter. But “I knew it would be an uphill battle (to get re-elected) due to the stigma the council has had for the last ... year and a half” in the public’s eye, he said.
The city wanted to operate the local cable system to generate revenue to try and keep from raising rates for city services. Clark said the council “had good intentions,” but it was “a good thing that became a nightmare.”
In 2006, a U.S. District Court judge denied the city the opportunity to buy the Adelphia franchises, saying the city violated its own ordinances in the attempt and basically did not seek enough public input.
The new city council that will oversee the city beginning in July will consist of Reynolds, Stroud, Turner and current council members Kathy Lawson and Gene Teague.
Clark said “it better be a council that works together. You have to work together to accomplish a goal ... but that doesn’t mean it has to be a 5-0 vote on every issue.”
“We’ll just have to get to know each other,” Reynolds said of the two new councilmen. “I feel like I can work with them” to help the city make progress.
Voter turnout was highest in the Druid Hills precinct at 32 percent and lowest in the Martinsville High School precinct at 18 percent.
Only 2,063 of the city’s 8,489 registered voters went to the polls, election results indicate.
The overall 23.7 percent turnout was in the middle of council elections in recent years. Turnout in the 2006 election was 19 percent. Elections in 2004 and 2002 had turnouts of 31 percent and 28 percent, respectively.
Ercell Cowan, the city’s voter registrar, said Tuesday’s turnout was higher than elections officials anticipated, but “we wish it had been higher.”
The highest turnouts have been with presidential elections, statistics show.
Tuesday’s election results will be official after the Martinsville Electoral Board conducts a canvass at 9 this morning. |
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