|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
After incumbents handily won most Tuscaloosa city elections last month, only the District 1 race advanced to a runoff between incumbent city councilor and local reverend, Matthew Wilson, and Shelton State dean of community relations, Joe Eatmon.
During the initial election on March 4, Eatmon and Wilson were participating in a three-way race with local organizer, Que Chandler. In March, Eatmon barely qualified for the runoff, receiving only 12 more votes than Chandler and 69 fewer votes than Wilson.
However, Eatmon and Chandler together received over 62 percent of the vote, an anti-Wilson voting bloc that seems to have lasted the month long lead-up to the runoff election yesterday.
According to the unofficial results from the Tuscaloosa Office of the City Clerk, Eatmon easily won the runoff with almost 60 percent of the vote. Eatmon received 582 votes and Wilson received 407.
In a January interview with APR, Eatmon said his number one priority if elected would be “attacking the crime issue” and laid out a plan for addressing blighted properties. While on the campaign trail, he criticized Wilson for the councilor’s past anti-union statements and received the West Alabama Labor Council’s endorsement before the first election last month.
The decisive factor though may have been a video Eatmon’s campaign shared on Facebook over the weekend that went mildly viral, garnering hundreds of likes and comments. The caption read in part: “While my opponent, Matthew Wilson, spent the day vandalizing my signs, my team spent the day talking to voters.”
A screenshot of the video uploaded to the Eatmon campaign’s Facebook page.
The posted recording does show an African-American man of Wilson’s approximate height and build kicking over an Eatmon campaign sign, but due to the low resolution APR was unable to independently verify whether the man in the video is actually the current city council member.
“Turns out that kicking down yard signs of your opponent is not a good campaign strategy,” UA College Democrats president and District 1 voter, Braden Vick, quipped after the results began to come in. Vick added that Wilson deserved his loss.
In a statement to APR, Que Chandler congratulated Eatmon on his victory, saying he has “shown a commitment to listening to residents and working toward a more engaged and responsive district.”
“I look forward to collaborating with him to ensure that the needs and priorities of our community remain at the forefront,” she said. Chandler also described the results as “an opportunity to unite and move forward together” and said she remains dedicated to seeing “the rollout of Neighborhood Action Teams, ongoing community surveys and quarterly clean-up efforts” take place.
Eatmon said he was “honored to have been chosen by the people of this district to represent them as their city councilor” in a post to his campaign Facebook page Tuesday night. He also promised to work hard “every day for every one in every room making our community a better place.”
Wilson did not respond to APR’s requests for comment.
