On topic of three-year terms for elected officials and eliminating run-off elections.

At the end of this blog post today is a newspaper clipping from 2004 that’s extraordinarily topical in 2019, of special note considering the run-off election tomorrow in Lake Worth Beach.

To learn more about the run-off tomorrow see the blog post following this one.

Elected officials in this City serve three-year terms after a ballot referendum passed in March 2017. And what will most certainly be a ballot question in March 2020 is eliminating run-off elections.

Following the run-off tomorrow this topic will go dormant for many months and then after Budget Season will go into high gear again and expect a very contentious debate. 

Run-off elections were a topic of debate in February 2004 as you will see in the newspaper clipping below from The Palm Beach Post. Rodney Romano was the mayor of Lake Worth fifteen years ago. In March of 2004 Mac McKinnon clobbered the other three candidates getting 57% of the vote for the District 2 seat but Joe Egly in District 4 wasn’t so lucky and he went into a run-off with Loretta Sharpe. Egly got 47%, Sharpe 33% and Ed Deveaux at 20%.

Because Egly did not reach that magic number of 50%  +  1 vote he was forced into a run-off to be held two weeks later at a cost of roughly $10,000 to the City in 2004 dollars. What a run-off costs now would be interesting to find out.

In the run-off on March 23rd, 2004 Joe Egly won the District 4 seat beating out Sharpe by 53% to 47%. Like the recent elections in March 2019, those elections in 2004 had a very low turnout and Sharpe did not complain of losing by just about one hundred votes. She accepted the results and moved on.

In the clipping below pay special attention to the last two paragraphs.


Without further ado to the news . . . and does the name Pamela Lopez sound familiar?

Click on clipping to enlarge:

Of note in 2009 District 1 Commissioner Scott Maxwell was re-elected (served prior in 2001–2003; resigned to run for mayor and lost to Rodney Romano) and it was about that time ten years ago that Maxwell began making waves about an idea he had called “Lake Worth Beach”.