With all the drama of a sneeze at the breakfast table when dining solo, the City Council election for two available seats was decided last evening a mere 25 minutes after the polls went dark.
City Clerk Martin Cole, who has grown into a masterful master of ceremonies presiding over the public vote-counting every other April before a slender but enthusiastic crowd in Council Chambers, made the call.
[img]2495|right|Jeff Cooper||no_popup[/img]Announcing the vote count from Precinct 1 in stentorian tones, Mr. Cole described the exact configuration the race that was not a race would form:
“Gary Abrams, 13 votes. Christopher King, 48 votes. Jeff Cooper, 82 votes. Jim Clarke, 68 votes.”
Proportionately, and by order, that is precisely the way the four contenders finished 90 minutes later at the decidedly painless, non-theatrical conclusion.
No cheering. No ahhing. Fingernails finished the evening in the same condition they started. No biting was necessary. Not a single heartbeat sped up.
The widely, deservedly, smiling incumbents, Mayor Cooper and Councilman Clarke, performed exactly as they and 90 percent of voters expected. Mr. King, the impressive 31-year-old freshman challenger, made a reasonably strong bid but never was in contention for the lead.
The final count:
Mr. Cooper, 2,167.
Mr. Clarke, 2,072.
Mr. King, 1,181.
Mr. Abrams, 288.
[img]1792|right|Jim Clarke||no_popup[/img]In one crucial respect, the election resembled most City Council races this century. The finish is firmly planted in cement by the time Mr. Cole finishes announcing the vote-by-mail totals. And so it was.
The popular Mr. Cooper, easily the champion fundraiser at $40,000, not only never was headed, never came close to being overtaken.
This refreshing breeze was so unlike four years ago when he squeaked past now-Vice Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells by three dozen votes days after the election.
Ever-smiling with that boyish grin that stamps him as the classic prom date and BMOC, Mr. Cooper entertained his jubilant supporters last evening at his brilliantly illumined Studio Estates home. The mayor’s tense victory over Ms. Sahli-Wells in 2010 was not as rewarding as it might have been. “I had my two daughters, but I did not have my wife to hug and kiss after our victory,” he said.
On this night, circumstances were happily different as milling-about backers toasted his 95-vote edge over his friend Mr. Clarke.
Mr. Cooper said the distinction between 2010’s win and this one was that “people had a little more familiarity with me.”
Candidates can talk in amorphous futuristic terms, incumbents run on their records, good or bad, he said.
“This time,” Mr. Cooper said, “people had a chance to see what I really was about. They saw that, as a candidate you promise numerous kinds of changes. As an elected official, you say, ‘Here is my body of work. Measure it. You can’t hide behind that. Here it is.’
George Laase, essayist for this newspaper, compiled data that showed Mr. Cooper won 37.7 percent of vote-by-mail ballots, Mr. Clarke was at 35.9 percent, Mr. King at 19.8 percent and Mr. Abrams at 6.5 percent. Mr. Cooper won eight of the 13 precincts in both filings, voting by mail, and at the polls. Mr. Clarke swept the other five.
Mr. Laase reported that Mr. Cooper fared most dominantly in the Carlson Park and Sunkist Park neighborhoods, winning 44 percent of the vote in each. Mr. Clarke’s best showings were in Culver Crest, his home precinct of Raintree and Carlson Park. Mr. King was strongest in his home district of Fox Hills and the Downtown Gateway neighborhood.
The closest Mr. Clarke came to shaving Mr. Cooper’s relatively modest but inflexible lead was after the eighth of the 13 absentee voter precincts had been tabulated. He was 34 votes behind, 759 to 725.
