_____________________________

Portsmouth Mayor James Holley was returned to office by narrow vote

Low Voter Turn-Outs Lead
To Few Surprises Locally

By Leonard E. Colvin

Chief Reporter

New Journal & Guide

   As predicted, African Americans failed to take control of the Franklin City Council, after two Black candidates, seeking to unseat the incumbent, split votes from the Black and White communities which could have been enough to oust Mayor Jim Councill.
        Mayor Councill was challenged by federal employee  Ellis Crum and businessman Greg McLemore, both of whom are Black.
       The city’s Mayor is elected at-large, and Mayor Councill  received some 768 votes (43 percent).  Crum received 559 (32 percent) and McLemore received 441 votes (25 percent).
       Some citizens believe that if one of the Black candidates had dropped out of the race, the remaining one would have attracted all of the 1,000 votes collected by the two Black challengers. That number would have bested Councill by 342 votes.
       Franklin has a majority African American population (58 percent) but there was only a 25 percent turnout of Black voters from the three majority Black wards. Overall there are  2,477 Blacks who are eligible to vote in wards three, four and five. But less than 25 percent of the eligible voters in  all three majority Black voting districts bothered to turn out to vote.
Both Crum and McLemore collected a share of  that  Black vote with the latter pulling most of them. Both pulled a number of White voters as well, with Crum pulling more than McLemore. There were both White and Black voters who were voting against the incumbent to oust him,  both of his challengers agree. But more were needed to get the job done.

      “I think both sides will claim that the other was the spoiler….that we split the Black vote especially,” Crum said. “But the Black vote was not enough for one of us to win. We needed more White votes as well.

Posted May 14, 2008

  The Black vote was so small, in my view, there was not much of a Black vote to split. Why Blacks will not come out is a mystery. Is it part apathy or part of the fact that so many people have been mentally beat down so long they do not have a reason to vote.  We  need to motivate people go get out to vote if we want political change in this city.” 

   Thomas Council, (no relation to the incumbent mayor), has been an outspoken critic of the city’s economic policies toward  the African American community. He said that many Blacks and Whites  went to the polls to vote against candidates, including Crum and Mayor Council, who they perceive as supporting a plan to redevelop the south end of the city, which is  mostly Black.
        “Redevelopment in this city means destruction of the Black community,” said Thomas Council. “There were not enough anti-(Mayor) Councill voters to come out and make a difference.  Today a lot of people are asking, ‘what happened?’ They thought it was the year that things would change and Mayor Councill would be gone.  But not enough of them came out to vote. The vote that would cause that change was split. We  just have to wait until next election and hope we can get a better opportunity then.”
       While the outcome in Franklin, with the splitting of the anti-incumbent votes,  was predictable, the race for Mayor of Portsmouth still has city political activists and the operators of the incumbent’s political machine scratching their heads.

TO READ THE WHOLE STORY AND MORE LIKE THIS CALL 543-6531 AND SUBSCRIBE TODAY!!!

Click Here to Subscribe to the New Journal and Guide.