On elections and change and narrow vote margins in City of Lake Worth, a place now called Lake Worth Beach.

In March 2007 Jeff Clemens narrowly defeated incumbent Lake Worth Mayor Marc Drautz in a run-off election.

The major issue that year was crime. It was out of control. Of then-Mayor Drautz the challenger Jeff Clemens said,


Usually an incumbent spends his time talking about the positive things he has accomplished, but in the absence of accomplishments the only recourse is to use negative attacks.


The pull quote in the mailer below is from The Palm Beach Post in December 2006:


Gang violence. Murders. Drive-by shootings. For the roughly 35,000 people that call [Lake Worth] home, the most horrific crimes have become a way of life.



Forced to make a hard decision, Mayor Clemens made one. He signed the paperwork merging the Lake Worth PD with PBSO and then crime began falling and continued to fall each and every year.

October 2018 marked the ten-year anniversary of PBSO in Lake Worth, now called Lake Worth Beach. Another change by a narrow margin.

But imagine if Jeff Clemens did not become the mayor back in 2007?

And this is why saving political mailers
is always a good idea.

Just as a reminder of when in Lake Worth, “[T]he most horrific crimes have become a way of life”.

Click on mailer to enlarge:

Two of the bullet points on the opposite side of the mailer are, “Pass ordinances that prevent gang members from congregating” and “Triple fines on slumlords that contribute to our dangerous overcrowding problem”.