Danville City Council Race – Update #1

Four Danville City Council seats will be up for grabs on May 4th. Since the Register & Bee has started the ball rolling with an article about the race, let’s start drilling down into some scenarios and play with some speculation.

First, let’s see who’s up for re-election. Gary Miller would be facing his first election, having been appointed to serve the remainder of Wayne Williams’ term after the Mayor left town for better employment (sheesh). Adam Tomer would be going for his second term, current Vice-Mayor Wayne Oakes going for his third (?) term and former Mayor Ruby Archie would be going for her fifth term.

Let’s start off with some speculation about the current officeholders…

OddsMakers of the candidate filing for re-election:

• Gary Miller: He’s already gotten his election packet. Chances of Miller running for re-election: 100%
• Wayne Oakes: I’ve got no doubt in my mind that he’ll put his name on the ballot. Chances of Oakes running for re-election: 100%
• Ruby Archie: Here’s where it gets tricky. If she runs and wins, she’ll hit the 20-year mark on Council. Archie’s been a great ambassador for the city after a stellar career in education. I see her ready to get some well deserved relaxation and retirement. Chances of Archie running for re-election: 31%
• Adam Tomer: He’s got the hunger for more than just Danville City Council. He wants to stay in public service and he’s got the attitude to go far. There’s a complicated theory going around that if Robert Hurt wins the 5th District US Congress race, Don Merricks would take Hurt’s place as State senator, which would leave Merricks’ state House seat open. Since Tomer ran a very close campaign against Danny Marshall and there’s no other real opposition in Merricks’ 16th House District, all Tomer would have to do is move one mile and establish residence. Got all that? We’ll have a test on it later. 🙂 All that being said, Tomer could easily run for re-election than resign if something comes up that he wants. Chances of Tomer running for re-election: 27%

Now that we’ve forecasted at least one open seat, let’s take a look at the potential challengers in no particular order.

• Alonzo Jones: The current School Board member has already filed & qualified and is on the ballot. Chances of Jones running for City Council: 100%
• John Gilstrap: Former city Parks & Recreation director, ran Seward Anderson’s campaign against Danny Marshall (oops, let’s not mention that). Chances of Gilstrap running for City Council: 88%
• Seward Anderson: File this one under the “Why the hell not?” category. Although he lost big against Danny Marshall, multiple open seats could attract him. Chances of Anderson running for City Council: 13%
• Neal Morris: The only reason he’s appearing on this list is his campaign against Chief of Police Broadfoot. He’s lost before and nothing seems to have changed about his popularity. Chances of Morris running for City Council: 21%
• Neal Spivey: He ran a close race four years ago, only losing by 101 votes. Spivey no longer lives in Danville. Chances of Spivey running for City Council: 0%
• Jonathan Hackworth: He picked up a packet but says he’s out due to “family issues”. Chances of Hackworth running for City Council: 1%
• Cecil Bridgeforth: Bridgeforth is a puzzle. He should have the community support to win a seat but came up short two years ago. Chances of Bridgeforth running for City Council: 46%
• Don Notdvedt: Notdvedt is one of the rare ones. He moved to Danville for a great job and decided to stay after retirement (Looking at you, Jerry Gwaltney). He’s highly respected and liked. He’s extremely active in the community, but does he have any desire to serve on City Council? Well, this is the first one to change. Notdvedt’s not a Danville resident. Chances of Notdvedt running for City Council: 0%

Needless to say, with the exceptions of Jones & Gilstrap, all of these OddsMakers are highly speculative and subject to quick changes.

Now that we’re in full speculation mode, let’s just go ahead and make some election predictions right now…

• Wayne Oakes & Gary Miller should have no problem winning re-election. The city is moving in a good direction and there’s no outstanding reason to think that the voters would send them packing. If Ruby Archie or Adam Tomer runs, they’re in by the same logic.
• Assuming one current member decides not to run for re-election, Alonzo Jones should be a prohibitive favorite for winning that seat. School Board members don’t have a high degree of name recognition, but that’s easy to overcome very quickly in a city election. And although it pains me to say it, Danville’s significant black vote has been shown to usually come through and deliver the votes for a black candidate. With all of those favorites, Jones should be in by a comfortable margin.
• If two seats are open, the race for the fourth seat becomes wide open and impossible to predict at this time. Whoeer declares first and campaigns hard would get a significant advantage.

There you go. We’ve put forward a detailed breakdown and analysis based on a lot of conjecture. That means that we could be totally wrong… we can live with that. More updates will be coming as candidates declare.