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The Voters Speak: Besse wins heated race in Southwest
Journal Photo by Jennifer Rotenizer
Incumbent Dan Besse talks on the phone to his wife after winning re-election to his Southwest Ward seat on the Winston-Salem City Council.
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Published: November 4, 2009
The four incumbent members of the Winston-Salem City Council still in the running for re-election won their races yesterday in an election that drew few voters and a surprising number of write-in votes in some races.
Democratic incumbent Dan Besse, who had fought a sometimes-heated campaign against Republican challenger Ted Shipley in the Southwest Ward, had 1, 737 votes, about 58 percent. Shipley received 1,254 votes, or about 42 percent, according to complete but unofficial results.
Besse said he was grateful for the votes.
"I'm going to continue to focus on helping Winston-Salem be a clean, green and safe city with opportunity for everyone," he said.
Shipley conceded the race to Besse about 10 p.m. He said he will run for office again but will wait a few years.
Shipley said that Besse deserves credit. "He's really good at city services, at day-to-day activities, and that's what people remember."
About 9 percent of the 143,629 eligible voters in Winston-Salem turned out to vote for the council.
Rob Coffman, the director of the Forsyth County Board of Elections, said he had expected between 10 percent and 12 percent of voters to turn out.
"I think it's a pretty specific type of voter that takes the time to vote in local elections," Coffman said.
"They're a little more interested, maybe, in local politics, and also, people just don't really think local elected officials mean a lot in their day-to-day life," he said.
Coffman said that the fact that Mayor Allen Joines was running unopposed could also have hurt turnout.
Voters cast 9,575 ballots for Joines, giving him a third term.
In the South Ward, Democrat incumbent Molly Leight won 58 percent of the votes after being challenged by two write-in candidates.
Republican Nathan Jones and Democrat Carolyn Highsmith started write-in campaigns over the weekend.
Leight received 958 votes; write-in candidates had 697. The elections board won't know how many votes individual write-in candidates received until sometime today.
Leight could not be reached for comment last night.
The North Ward seat went to community activist D.D. Adams, a Democrat. Adams had 926 votes, about 66 percent, beating Republican John Hopkins, who received 476 votes.
Adams was supported by Council Member Nelson Malloy Jr., who has held the seat for the past 20 years. Malloy announced over the summer that he would not run for another term.
Adams could not be reached last night.
In the Northwest Ward, Democratic incumbent Wanda Merschel received 1,452 votes, about 53 percent. Her Republican challenger, Peter Sorensen, had 1,264, about 46 percent.
Longtime incumbent Vivian Burke, who represents the city's Northeast Ward, soundly defeated challenger Claudia Shivers. Burke, a Democrat, got 884, about 70 percent, of the votes cast in the race. Shivers, a Republican, received 376.
Democrat James Taylor, a juvenile-court counselor, won the seat in the Southeast Ward. Taylor beat Republican Chuck Woolard 701 votes to 292.
On Friday, the Republican Party withdrew support from Woolard, after finding out that he had been convicted of misdemeanor counts of marijuana possession and forgery about 20 years ago.
Taylor won the Democratic nomination for the seat by beating incumbent Council Member Evelyn Terry in a runoff election in October.
The East Ward seat went to Derwin Montgomery, the Winston-Salem State University student who beat incumbent Council Member Joycelyn Johnson in the Democratic primary. Montgomery had been running unopposed, though some East Ward residents said they had heard rumblings of a write-in campaign to keep Johnson on the council. Montgomery, 21, received 741 votes; write-in candidates in the East Ward got 75 votes.
In the West Ward, 889 were cast for Republican Robert Clark, who ran unopposed for re-election to the ward's seat on the council.
lgraff@wsjournal.com
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