BreakDown: Danville’s 2014 Municipal Elections

It’s been a week since Danville’s voters made their choices for City Council and School Board. Starting with the City Council race, Let’s do a BreakDown on the good things, the bad things, and the ugly things that happened to each of the candidates…

We’ll BreakDown the School Board race in another article. Today, it’s about Danville’s City Council election. We’ll go in order of the election results, starting with the top vote getter.

John Gilstrap: 1st place with 3408 votes.

• The Good: Gilstrap made no mistakes since he took office four years ago and was well deserving of another term. His campaign was on cruise control from the start and his “in charge” attitude sent him to the top. He finished top 4 in 15 of the 18 voting precincts and never looked back.
• The Bad: Nothing.
• The Ugly: Absolutely nothing.

Alonzo Jones: 2nd place with 3089 votes.

• The Good: The same thing that I said about Gilstrap, except adding Jones’ charisma. He was also safe from the beginning. Jones also finished in the top 4 in every precinct showing that he had good crossover support to the white voting bloc.
• The Bad: Nothing.
• The Ugly: Absolutely nothing.

Gary Miller: 3rd place with 3068 votes.

• The Good: See above. Strong incumbent support. Safe from the start of the campaign. Top 4 results in 16 of the 18 precincts.
• The Bad: Nothing really. 21 votes between Miller and Jones is not statistically significant.
• The Ugly: Absolutely nothing.

Three incumbents with three strong endorsements that produced three big winners. I love it when a plan comes together. Now on to the challengers and their BreakDown.

James Buckner: 4th place with 2290 votes (Last elected spot).

• The Good: Well-ran and well-funded campaign with good advisers. Buckner leveraged his small businessman angle to the business community and it caught on quickly. He captured some of the “Vogler-type” youth vote and that was enough to push him to a victory.
• The Bad: The “Vogler-type” youth vote wasn’t as energized for Buckner as they were two years ago but he captured enough to win.
• The Ugly: Buckner was lost at the first candidates’ forum and was simply bleah. He got the advice that he needed and was able to turn it around quickly.

Joyce Glaise: 5th place with 2039 votes.

• The Good: Wow. Look at that vote total. Much higher than I expected, and Glaise was only 262 votes from winning a council seat.
• The Bad: Glaise had very little white bloc voting support and that’s why she didn’t win.
• The Ugly: Glaise started out looking out of touch and she barely improved that through the campaign. Danville has changed in the last 16 years and Joyce Glaise never got a grasp on that.

Dawn Witter: 6th place with 1963 votes.

• The Good: Witter started out powerful and strong, but that’s hard to carry through a 6 week election campaign. She really worked a good grassroots effort.
• The Bad: The business community got behind James Buckner instead of Dawn Witter and that seriously handicapped her campaign.
• The Ugly: Lots of Ugly here, and none of it is Witter’s fault. Her social activism pissed off a lot of narrow-minded Danville voters and they never considered her for acceptability as a candidate. Witter was wise enough not to pander to that group because it never would have worked, but the end result was still bad for her vote totals. The second Ugly thing is that Dawn Witter was hit hard by a lot of bullet voting for Joyce Glaise and that dropped her down to 6th place. I’m working on a NumbersCentral article to talk about that issue.

Thomas Motley: 7th place with 1447 votes.

• The Good: Motley’s booming, powerful speaking voice was there as always.
• The Bad: That booming, powerful speaking voice said the same old thing as it did the last four years. It didn’t work then, it didn’t work this time.
• The Ugly: Motley’s campaign was the worst one that I have ever seen for a municipal election. Even his “utility bill” schtick went bizarrely off the rails when it started making Joe King look like the antichrist by controlling the city. He failed to appear at the Chamber of Commerce’s forum and never even submitted answers to their questions. Ugh. Talk about an Ugly campaign.

And there you have a Good, Bad and Ugly BreakDown of the Danville City council election. Let’s do one for the School board next…