Lumberton mayoral candidate: No need for runoff

LUMBERTON - The results of last week's special mayoral election between three independent candidates  led Lumberton officials to declare the need for a runoff, as none of the candidates received 50 percent of the vote plus one.

At the close of vote counting Tuesday night, Kent Crider (146 votes) and Jonathan F. Griffith (126 votes) were set to face off in a runoff, the date of which had not yet been determined. The third candidate, Jerry Walters, netted 30 votes in the race to fill the post Ben Winston resigned from in November.

But now, one of the mayoral candidates is saying there's no need for voters to return to the polls.

"There won't be a runoff," said Crider, who is the current Ward 1 alderman. "The attorney general issued an opinion as recently as October 2015 that said if all the candidates run as independents, there is no runoff, and we all ran as independents.

"When (City Clerk Merlene Wall) said there would be a runoff, it was because she had just come from a class in Jackson that said if you have parties involved — Democrats, Republicans and so forth — you have to have that 50 plus one."

But Anna Moak, communications director with the Mississippi Secretary of State's office, said in an email Friday that there would indeed be a runoff.

"In a municipal special election, a runoff is held two weeks after the first election if no candidate received a majority of the vote," she said. "No candidate received a majority vote. Griffith and Crider go to a runoff election on Dec. 29th."

Crider said the same situation happened once before in Lumberton: the 2009 mayoral election in which Miriam Holder defeated Albert Young and Larry Strahan. After a recount following that election, the final tally gave Holder the nod, with 263 votes to Young's 252 in an election that saw more than half of the city's 1,200 registered voters cast a ballot.

"(Holder) had the most votes, but she didn't have the 50 percent, and the Attorney General said ... if we all run as independents, there won't be a runoff," Crider said. "The person with the most votes will be declared the winner."

Crider said the election results won't be certified until early this week because of affidavit votes.

"There's not enough there to change the outcome, but there were 10 of those," he said. "They can't certify the race until seven days is up because of that, so that will be Monday or Tuesday."

Wall declined to comment Friday.