City council candidates still await results

CAIRO, Ill. -- Candidates for the Cairo City Council waited anxiously in the courthouse hallway late Tuesday night as more than 200 absentee and early votes were counted that would decide whether they won or lost.

The six-member council will have at least three new faces but could have as many as six by the time all the ballots are tabulated. At press time Tuesday night, the results in the races were:

• Council member-at-large: Bob Conroy led incumbent Linda Jackson with 527 votes to 486 in the race to replace Joseph Thurston, who declined to seek another term.
• Ward 1: Senior council member Elbert "Bo" Purchase trailed challenger Joseph W. Holder by a single vote. Holder had 105, Purchase had 104.
• Ward 2: Kathy McAllister trailed Thomas M. Simpson by seven votes in the race to replace controversial councilman Bobby Whitaker. Simpson had 100 votes to McAllister's 93.
• Ward 3: Challenger Lorenzo Nelson led incumbent Sandra Tarver 44 votes to 37.
• Ward 4: In the only decided council race, Richard Pitcher, an employee of Cairo Public Utilities, took the contest from Thomas Burris Jr., 199 votes to 84.
• Ward 5: Tyrone Coleman, a longtime observer of the council for WKRO radio, led opponent Phillip Hodges 114 to 97 in the race to replace councilwoman Carolyn Ponting.

The new council members must decide whether they will seek to restore the past balance of power in Cairo where the mayor didn't try to use vetoes to thwart council actions.

Mayor Paul Farris won a victory last summer when a state court judge ruled that the city operates under state laws governing what is commonly called an aldermanic form of government. Previously, the town had operated as though it had a commission form of government, which gives council members nearly equal authority to the mayor in certain areas of city government.

The three council members who were seeking re-election Tuesday fought Farris over his veto authority, refusing to recognize it even when a veto override would have resulted in their receiving pay Farris had withheld as part of a lengthy fight.

rkeller@semissourian.com

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