Voters in a small town in … Missouri have re-elected their popular mayor to a fourth term, several weeks after he died of a heart attack.
Harry Stonebraker died at the age of 69 in March …
He won by a landslide, securing 90% of the vote in the 723-population town.
Winfield [town] will appoint a temporary mayor to serve until a special election is held in April 2010.
…
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or Paperback
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Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
Well, the best politicians are dead politicians, so…………..
(Okay, maybe not. But still…)
-Rusty
This makes a lot more sense than it seems to on first reading. In a town this size, with a long-term mayor, there will be three or four people, max, who would have both the skills and desire to be mayor (probably fewer). Unless one of the others is very unhappy with the mayor for some reason, they’re probably content to serve on the council.
Whoever was running against the mayor was unlikely to be a “real” candidate. Voting for the dead mayor gets you a council appointment instead of the unserious candidate. It’s a very reasonable vote.
No Stephanie Z, it does not make a lot of sense.
It was “several weeks after he died”.
Why not elect George Bush as mayor or Barack Obama or Atilla the Hun or Zeus.
All it shows is that the majority of the voters are sentimental fools. If it is not important to elect a real mayor then why have a vote at all?
Bob, go find out who the other candidate in the election was and how many people had already voted absentee and then tell me whether it makes sense. If there’s no provision for changing the ballot, you work with the ballot you have. If splitting the vote between the dead guy and a write-in means someone incompetent could end up mayor, you vote for the dead guy.
Just because all you can see from where you sit is sentiment, just because sentiment makes for a prettier newspaper story, that doesn’t mean that’s all there was.
I’m reminded of the 1991 Louisiana Governor’s race when David Duke was trying to unseat Edwin Edwards. Edwards won even though he was known to be corrupt because nobody wanted Duke as governor. A pundit said later that “it’s hard when you have to choose between a crook and a Nazi.”
Seems it was too late to remove the deceased mayor’s name because absentee voting had already begun, so the ballots could no longer be legally changed.
The other candidate was a sitting alderman, however, so I’d assume he was serious about contending the office and qualified to hold it. Unless that guy did something that made him really unpopular since being elected alderman, it apparently did come down to sentimentality.
I feel bad for the candidate who lost to him. That’s a blow to anyone’s self-esteem.
It’s a Missouri thing. We elected a Mel Carnahan as governor after he died. Because a dead man was better than John Ashcroft.