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Tom Adams Wins Monrovia Mayoral Seat – Probably
Monrovia Weekly Apr 15, 2015
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Tom Adams celebrates his lead Tuesday evening at Jakes – Photos by Terry Miller
Makeup of Council Changes with Election of Adams, Crudgington and Shevlin
By Susan Motander
On Tuesday night, there was jubilation at the victory party for Tom Adams, but the current mayor, Mary Ann Lutz, said she would not yet concede the election. Adams came out with an early lead in the absentee ballots [garnering 51% of the votes cast to Lutz’s 44%] and never looked back. Ultimately, Adams received 1924 votes to Lutz’s 1738 with minor candidate Leonard Holen collecting only 131 votes.
Adams was pleased with the results at his victory party on Tuesday evening. Surrounded by his supporters, Adams said, “I want to thank the voters for their confidence in me. I want to thank all my supporters for their help.
“Monrovia has a lot of issues that came up in this campaign,” he added. “We start to work on those tomorrow as promised in my campaign.”
However, there are still over 700 provisional ballots to be certified and counted. These are absentee ballots received after Friday and those taken to the polls. Other provisional ballots might be those of persons voting at the wrong precinct, according to City Clerk Alice Atkins.
There are currently 701 of these ballots, but that number may increase as recent legislation provides for all ballots postmarked by the date of the election and received within the next three days may also be counted. Atkins said the total number of provisional ballots will not be known until Friday of this week and the verification of them may mean that a final count will not be made until sometime next week.
With Lutz carrying only one precinct in southern Monrovia, the probability of a major change is possible, but not probable. Lutz, however, refused to give up on Tuesday evening, saying, “This is not over. There are virtually two more precincts to count (referring to the provisional ballots). I am not conceding.
“I am proud of the election I ran,” she said. “I took the high road: I ran a positive campaign. I have faith in the citizens. This city has not finished speaking.”
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On the City Council side of the election, with nine candidates on the ballot and eight actually running (Tom Gulley withdrew, but not in time to remove his name from the ballot), it appears that Becky Shevlin has retained her seat and that newcomer Gloria Crudgington will join the council.
Crudgington, who had not have major donors backing her, said, “I am an issue person: I did not win tonight; preservation did.” Crudgington ran her campaign promising to work to preserve Monrovia’s historic homes and neighborhoods.
Election Results: These results have not yet been certified. With all absentee ballots and all precincts reporting in, these are the results reported by City Clerk, Alice Atkins. The provisional ballots have yet to be counted.
Mayor:
-Leonard Holen 131
-Mary Ann Lutz 1738
-Tom Adams 1924
City Council:
-Clifford De Costa 285
-Chris Ziegler 537
-Tom Gulley 71
-Steve Grollnek 88
-Robert Parry 1237
-Gloria Crudgington 1591
-Scott Austin 1338
-Jordan Kittleson 427
-Becky Shevlin 1580
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