Piedmont’s mayoral election took center stage Tuesday night as a runoff was announced between Brian Young and incumbent Charlie Fagan, while familiar faces took the majority of votes in the City Council race.In the unofficial results, two-term mayor Fagan took 39 percent of the votes, at a total of 585. Young came in second with 477 votes, nearly 32 percent of the vote.
James Bennett, the city’s mayor from 1984 to 1992, took 449 votes. Bennett finished just 28 votes behind Young.
The mayor’s race isn’t the only one still up for grabs, with a runoff between Council District 3 candidates Frank Cobb and Edward Hanson and Council District 7 candidates Doug Goss and Brent Morrison.
District 3’s totals came in at 95 votes for incumbent Hanson and 84 for Cobb, a former city council member. Jimmy Trammell, who lightly campaigned for the race, garnered 43 votes.
District 7 totaled incumbent Goss at 120 votes and Morrison, a local Piedmont attorney, at 97 votes. Michael Downey, District 7’s third candidate, took 53 votes.
The remaining City Council seats were won by comfortable margins by their incumbents.
Council District 1 saw John Lawrence with 54 percent of the vote over Miles Nelson Palmore and Betty Williams.
Incumbent Mary Bramblett took District 2 with 73 percent of the vote over Cynthia “Cindy” Crosby.
District 4 incumbent Kenneth Kelley took 65 percent of the vote over Shelby Holder.
District 5 incumbent Eddie Baldwin received 56 percent of the vote over Jennifer Hansard Ballew. Incumbent William “Bill” Baker took 67 percent of his district’s totals over Bruce Adderhold.
Fagan said the race was difficult since it required him to deal with two other candidates. But now that the votes are in, he said he’s going to take a different approach to his campaign.
“We had to go against two candidates this time and of course both of them were different,” he said in an interview just after totals were announced. “But it’ll be a whole different campaign starting tomorrow.”
Fagan said he was happy to see his name make it into the runoff but he wished his campaign could have closed the deal and begin the work on Piedmont he started eight years ago.
“We’ve gotten a lot done in eight years and I’m ready to keep Piedmont moving forward to do a lot more in the next four,” Fagan said. “I wish we could have closed tonight and gotten back to work because there’s a lot of work in Piedmont that needs to be done. But we’ll do this thing until October and then go back to work.”
Young was at a loss for words following the results, saying, “I just thank everybody for voting me.”
Young said the results weren’t a surprise to him and he plans on staying on the same track with his campaign.
A total of 1,517 ballots, including 51 absentee, came in for Piedmont’s election, making it a 58 percent turnout.
A runoff for the three remaining seats will take place Oct. 7.
