In a changing of the guard, John Cunningham, a newcomer to politics in Flagler Beach, took the largest share of the vote and defeated nearly 20-year incumbent Jane Mealy to win a seat on the City Commission, with James Sherman winning re-election to a second term.
In Bunnell, two newcomers, David Atkinson and Dean Sechrist, won the seats that Tonya Gordon and Tina Marie-Schultz left uncontested.
Cunningham won 41 percent of the vote, with Sherman taking 36 percent. Mealy took 24 percent, with 1,750 voters casting a ballot. In Bunnell, with just 805 voters casting a ballot, Atkinson was the leading vote-getter with 235, or 29 percent, and Sechrist was second with 228 votes, or 28 percent. They defeated Bonita Robinson (20 percent), Amanda Crosby Hawkins (14 percent), and David Wilhite (9 percent).
“I think they’ll be a good addition to the board,” Bunnell Vice Mayor John Rogers said of his two new colleagues.
Bunnell Mayor Catherine Robinson’s term was also up, but she ran unopposed, as she has in all but one or two races since the mid-1990s. Same story with Beverly Beach Mayor Steve Emmett and Beverly Beach Town Commissioners Philip Krakowski, Jeffrey Schuitema and Raymond Tremblay.
Mealy–at 81 a more energetic and sharper elected official than many of her far younger colleagues on other local boards–was a workhorse by nature. She had planned to spend nearly all 12 hours at the edge of the polling station at Flagler Beach City Hall, and with Mealy setting the pace, Sherman and Cunningham couldn’t very well be outlasted. But she wasn’t taking the election for granted. “There’s always the first time,” she said, hours before polls closed. “I don’t know, I don’t want to get my hopes up too high.”
She had a sense of what was ahead, though she’d read the commission’s recent direction right. “We didn’t have the antagonism. As far as how we get along with each other I think it’s probably the same as it’s always been,” she said. “I was telling some people when I first got here, John helped me empty my car and set up my chairs, and everybody’s like, really?
Mealy arrived at 7:20 this morning, setting up at the southeast corner of South 3rd and South Central Avenue. Cunningham helped her. Maybe he knew something, too.
He’d planned to take in the results in a quiet corner at Breakaways, the Flagler Beach restaurant and bar, where he could not be reached this evening. “It’s a good experience because I’ve never done this before,” he’d said a few hours before the polls closed. “I’ve gotten to talk with a lot of folks and hear them tell me their concerns. It’s been positive, even if doesn’t go my way. I’m still going to stay fully engaged and active and continue to support the city, because that’s all of our city, and we all live here, so I to keep it nice for when My grandkids come play at the beach.” He now gets to do that from a commission seat with policy-making authority.
While Bunnell’s candidates were scarce for most of the day, the three Flagler Beach candidates campaigned almost together, with Mealy on one side and Cunningham and Sherman on the other.
“I had hopes that he’d make it, I mean, that’s why I had his signs in my yard,” Flagler Beach Commissioner Rick Belhumeur said. “I think he’ll be a good fit up there. Like any other newcomer it’ll take a while for him to get up to speed but I think he’ll take it seriously and do a good job.”
“I just want to thank you for all you’ve done for Flagler Beach,” a man told Mealy from his car as he stopped at the stop sign before driving off. Mealy wasn’t sure how to take that: a backhanded compliment? Was he telling her she’d had her time, that it was time to feed the pigeons on Broadway like a character out of an Isaac Singer story?
“I feel sad for Jane. She’s had so many years of service, I know she’s disappointed, I haven’t talked to her yet,” Scott Spradley, the chair of the Flagler Beach commission, said this evening after the results came in. “We have some level of continuity, which is good, with 80 percent of the same commission at a time when we’ve spent so much time dealing with the current pressing issues of the city, it’s good that we have that continuity. I have met John and had a couple of conversations with him but I don’t know much about him although I soon will. I think of the four members of the commission who return, I suspect that it will be hopefully a smooth integration and an expedient integration of our new member.”
