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Voters find a choice, after all
Candidates running unopposed discover they have competition
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Published: November 5, 2009
Updated: 11/05/2009 12:35 am
Some Winston-Salem voters have a sense of humor.
About 9 percent of the voters who cast ballots for mayor wrote down their own suggestions rather than vote for incumbent Mayor Allen Joines, who was running unopposed and won a third four-year term on Tuesday.
The top write-in vote-getter?
Billy Prim, the owner of the Winston-Salem Dash baseball team and developer of the beleaguered downtown ballpark.
Prim got 12 write-in votes, said Rob Coffman, the director of the Forsyth County Board of Elections.
Other top write-in names: Nathan Tabor, the chairman of the Forsyth County Republican Party (who lives in Kernersville and so was ineligible to win the position) and Vernon Robinson, a Republican and former member of the Winston-Salem City Council. He lost his South Ward seat to Molly Leight in 2005.
Leight herself, now the incumbent, faced last-minute write-in campaigns from two people. One, Republican Nathan Jones, received 472 write-in votes.
The other, Democrat Carolyn Highsmith, got 190. Leight won the election with 958 votes. Still, write-in candidates in the South Ward received about 42 percent of the votes.
Highsmith said she would possibly consider running for the council in the future. "We've got major issues with our community," she said. "This is not an ego thing for me -- if we feel like we need to do it we will. "
Jones could not be reached for comment.
In the city's East Ward, 25 people wrote-in the name of Council Member Joycelyn Johnson, who lost her seat in the Democratic primary election to Derwin Montgomery, a student at Winston-Salem State University. Montgomery won 741 votes, meaning he will represent the ward when the new council members take office in December.
In Yadkin County, the mayor of East Bend, Stewart Maples, was re-elected with 60 votes. But a write-in candidate, or candidates, drew 41 votes.
In Kernersville, President Obama earned a write-in vote for mayor.
"I don't think he's planning on moving there," Coffman said.
Predictably, fictional characters also got write-in votes. Named as possible candidates for mayor of Winston-Salem were Mary Poppins, Santa Claus, Donald Duck and Bullwinkle, Coffman said.
"The Disney characters do relatively well," he said.
"We also had ‘Ayatollah Saddam Hitler.' All one name."
lgraff@wsjournal.com
727-7279
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