Swannanoa incorporation bid fails

From Daily Planet Staff Reports

Three challengers who billed themselves as liberals won seats on Asheville City Council during the election on Nov.  3, as council’s lone conservative, Carl Mumpower Jr., finished a distant fourth.

Turnout was low with 20 percent of registered voters casting ballots, following a record-low 11 percent turnout in the Oct. 6 primary that narrowed the field of candidates for the general election. In the last councilmanic elections in 2007, 22 percent of registered voters participated.

The three winners were Esther Manheimer, 6,567 votes; Gordon Smith, 6,301 votes; and Cecil Bothwell, 5,899 votes. Mumpower, who did little campaigning for a third term, mustered 4,749 votes.

Incumbent Councilwoman Robin Cape, who ran as a write-in, came in just behind Mumpower with 4,620 votes. She briefly considered challenging the result, since a number of write-in ballots were not counted because they were not filled in properly, but later decided she is OK with the outcome.

A third incumbent, Kelly Miller, chose not to seek re-election in order to attend to personal responsibilities, most notably to help his wife deal with cancer.

Other finishers, both running as conservatives, were J. Neal Jackson with 3,476 votes and Ryan Croft, 2,525 votes.

In the mayoral election, incumbent Terry Bellamy swept to a second term in a landslide, with 9,543 votes versus conservative challenger Robert Edwards’ 2,431 votes.

Manheimer, 38, is a land-use attorney; Smith. 39, is a counselor-therapist and runs the Scrutiny Hooligans Weblog; and Bothwell, 59, is a writer and builder.

After learning of her win, Mainheimer told her supporters, “I’m going to make sure Asheville preserves its community and maintains that sense of balance as we go forward and as we come out of this recession.”

Meanwhile, Councilman-elect Gordon Smith said he will try to extend domestic partner benefits as one of his first priorities. “That is one I’m going to be pushing fairly quickly,” Smith said.

At his victory party, Bothwell, who was the top vote-getter in the primary, urged his supporters to look to the 2011 councilmanic elections for further progressive advances.

In a reference to his agenda of local solutions to global climate change, Bothwell said there are still council members he views as obstacles to environmental change:

“I would hope in two years, we will replace Bill Russell and Jan Davis,” he told the Mountain Xpress. “I don’t think they get it. Global warming is a local problem everywhere. To the extent that council is not aware of that, we need to replace people.”

In Swannanoa, the voters decisively rejected a proposal to incorporate the community as a town, following a bitterly contested campaign.

Residents voted against incorporation by 1,589 to 1,013, with a relatively high turnout ranging from 38.17 percent at Williams Elementary to 34.17 percent at First Baptist of Swannanoa, the community’s two largest precincts.