Four years ago, Patrick McGrady lost his bid to become mayor of Aberdeen to incumbent mayor Michael Bennett by about two dozen votes. On Tuesday night McGrady avenged the loss, defeating three-term mayor Bennett by 50 votes and securing his seat in the mayor’s office.
In 2011, Bennett eked out a tougher-than-expected win against challenger McGrady – by just 26 votes – and said, at the time, that it was “probably the nastiest campaign I’ve had to endure.”
In the city council race, incumbent Sandra Landbeck was re-elected and will be joined by newcomers Melvin Taylor and Tim Lindecamp.
Still in play, however, is the 4th city council seat – where incumbent Stephen Smith leads Sean DeBonis by just one vote. The final member of the city council will be decided during a Thursday morning count of the 21 provisional ballots.
The unofficial election results are:
Mayor:
Patrick McGrady – 600
Michael Bennett – 550
Marla Posey-Moss – 391
Ruth Elliott – 237
City Council:
Melvin Taylor – 898
Sandra Landbeck – 802
Tim Lindecamp – 782
Stephen A. Smith – 654
Sean DeBonis – 653
Daniel J. Forte – 618
Barbara Osborn Kreamer – 554
Jason Kolligs – 519
Carol Bruce – 484
This years Aberdeen election got flat out nasty. Mud slinging everywhere. Now the council needs to repeal their pay raises. The public isn’t getting a raise so why should city council
They need to fire chief Trabert. That would be long overdue. I live in churchville and I am glad I don’t have to put up with the Aberdeen town BS. Good Luck and I hope Patrick cleans house. At least Aberdeen candidates didn’t start a yelling match with a women’s rights group, like what happened in Bel Air with some candidate named Phil Einhorn. But Aberdeen did start taking shots at each other’s pretty early.
Congrats to all the winning candidates. It’s nice to see some new faces. The Mayor does not have the authority to fire anyone. Not the Chief of Police, not even a garbage collector. The City Manager has that power. To get rid of the City Manager, it has to be by majority vote of the Mayor AND Council. Stop making yourselves look foolish by suggesting otherwise. I’m pretty certain Mr. McGrady would prefer people not spin up falsehoods and make his job all the more difficult by uninformed/uneducated people making claims of firings.
The City manager has whatever power the Mayor and council give him. Under Simmons the city manager took care house keeping which he would call the strong Mayor model. Under Bennett he took charge of everything which he would call the weak mayor model. Under either model he is a good city manager..
Getting rid of Trabert is long overdue. And hopefully Smitty off the council as well.
A belated Happy Halloween to the City of Aberdeen! “Bennett’s Curse” is finally over!
550 votes cast FOR Michael Bennett, 1,228 votes cast AGAINST Michael Bennett.
Congratulations to Patrick McGrady, Ruth Elliott and Marla Posey Moss for challenging the incumbent!
And special congratulations to Mayor-Elect McGrady and new Council-Elects Taylor & Lindecamp!
See you at the next Council Meeting (you have a lot of work to do). Good Luck!
Congratulations to Melvin Taylor the leading vote getter in this election.
“550 votes cast FOR Michael Bennett, 1,228 votes cast AGAINST Michael Bennett.”
This logic seems a little pointless to me. It’s like saying “600 votes cast FOR Patrick McGrady, 1178 votes cast AGAINST Patrick McGrady.”
McGrady clearly won, but let’s be realistic here: he won with 33.7% of the vote, versus Bennett’s 30.9%. McGrady should be most thankful for two things: Bennett’s inability to articulate why he should be mayor another 4 years, and Ruth Elliot and Marla Posey-Moss splintering voters who would’ve likely voted for Bennett or not at all.
With that said, I wish the best to Patrick. His success as mayor is the city’s success. His failure will only serve to hurt the city.
General Patton said that he would rather the Russian army in front of him than have the French army behind him.
McGrady said he would rather have Bennett in front of him than have the NHDC behind him.
Does this mean Art Helton will cease having a free pass? Does this mean that there will be new stores opening instead of barber shops, nail places, store front churches, and drug treatment places? Does this mean Rogers won’t get plowed and salted first as soon as the first snow flake falls while the rest of us wait a day before a pick up with a plow cuts a single lane down the center of the street?
Bennett must have annexed Harmony Church road when we weren’t watching because I saw Helton and wife at the polls.
Goodbye Mikey. Thanks for the memories of cronyism, excess spending, raises for your council clowns, and the despair of Aberdeen under your watch. The new Mayor needs to get to work to undo the favors that were handed out……..especially some of those “appointments”. Looks like there might be a police chief opening again……..sorry Henry. You picked the wrong horse to ride.
I thought I’ve been reading that the Police Department was doing quite well. So would he replace the Chief just as a revenge move?
The department is never going to “do well” under Trabert who was a political hack with a lack luster record as an officer. However, this time there is really no need for a national search because the next chief is in house already. Officer Bane should replace Trabert for so many reasons if only that he is a true leader and Trabert is truly not. Patrick, if you are reading this, sack Trabert and elevate Bane.
Bennett (with the rubber-stamping Landbeck and Garner) fired Chief Rudy for that exact same reason (so the precedent has been set!).
Obviously you didnt know Garner at all, he was far from a rubber stamper. He was a strong, independent, ethical man, who used evidence based facts to make his decisions.
Sorry Amy, your statement is factually incorrect.
With respect to the firing of Randy Rudy, Bruce did go along with Bennett even though he may have disagreed. I had long talks with him about the vote, before and after, and he went along to get along. Otherwise Bruce was an honorable man in every way and tried to do the right things for the right reasons. Unfortunately Bennett held all the cards and the council sat around agreeing or disagreeing without any power.
I still can’t believe that we got rid of both Elliott and Bennett in one election. I hope that the new Mayor picks his department heads wisely and rights this ship. And I hope that the new Mayor remembers that he wasn’t the overall leading vote receiver.
Congrats again Melvin Taylor. And goodbye Ruth Elliot!!!
Aberdeen has the worst police department. Unprofessional, racist, chief of police is a follower not a leader at all. The chief gathers all of the facts but he quickly turns his head in bad situations…..RACIST….RACIST…RACIST
City Hall better brace itself because there is a new Mayor in town and I believe this one neither forgives or forgets. What a breath of fresh air.
The article makes it seem like “losing by just 50 votes” is a close call. We’ll Bennett got 8.3% less votes than McGrady. That is a significant margin of defeat for a 3 term incumbent Mayor. The line about “if more people would have just voted” comes from the mouths of bitter loserd. Anyone that knows anything about election voting patterns knows that even if 10,000 people voted, the votes would generally go the same way in terms of percentages. Same with absentee ballots. This ele ton was a referendum on the good old boy Aberdeen mafia style of ineffective leadership. The people have spoken….all 8.3% more than those that supported the former Mayor. Change is the marching order…..top to bottom.
For those that think that there is some magic change wand you may want to look over the charter or code or whatever they are calling the town laws these days. I think it’s pretty clear that the 2 “teams” got people elected the “team” or philosophy that got the most votes will have a majority rule. If I read correctly the outgoing mayor’s team holds a majority, the vote results are nothing more than a bottleneck. I hope that both sides can work together on some issues and I’m sure a little give and take will be in order. I for one would like to see the 1 term senator stop getting his free passes and stay out of town issues and I’d like to see my grand kids being able to play in a decent park instead of driving them to Bel Air.
I will add that i think the snow plow situation could be handled better. I think the police do a good job, I think there are some dedicated officers on the force. I don’t know about keeping pet chickens so I would like to see a decent proposal since some people really want them.
Aberdeen Mayor McGrady Announces Intent to Nominate Jason Kolligs to Fill City Council Vacancy
http://www.daggerpress.com/2016/01/11/aberdeen-mayor-mcgrady-announces-intent-to-nominate-jason-kolligs-to-fill-city-council-vacancy/
The end of February is approaching and pretty much nothing has been done. McGrady won’t give in and the council won’t give in and that’s just on filling the vacant seat. I don’t see any legislation getting dealt with for the next couple of years and I’m afraid to see what the budget will look like after they all play tug of war with it. Instead of a temper tantrum, Mcgrady should have tried to build up a relationship with Taylor or Lindecamp. As it stand now, even if he could get his guy on, the other 3 would vote against and it would be 3-2 on measures unless Helton’s plants think that one of the 3 may go rogue.