East Lansing won’t be seeing any new faces in city politics.
In the primaries Tuesday for East Lansing City Council, four of the eight candidates were selected to continue on to the Nov. 6 general elections.
All four of the candidates already serve on city committees.
Bill Sharp, Kevin Beard, Vic Loomis and Liz Harrow advanced to the next round.
Vic Loomis, 54, is a senior vice president and senior lender for National City Bank of Michigan/Illinios. He is also chairman of the Downtown Development Authority. He received 1,103 votes, which was about 25 percent of the votes.
“I feel good, I feel really good,” he said. “I am very energized and quick to point out this is only the primaries and I have a lot of work ahead of me.”
Sharp, 73, is retired and was also the only city council incumbent to run for re-election this year. Councilmember Beth Schwarze chose not to run again.
Sharp received 1,062 votes, about 24 percent of the vote. Sharp, who was first voted into council in 1993, said he expected these primary results.
He spent the evening surrounded by friends at Reno’s East Side Sportsbar and Grill, 1310 Abbott Road, periodically leaving to call the election station and check on the progress of the ballots.
“If I didn’t think I was going to win, I wouldn’t have run,” he said as election results began pouring in. “The way it is now I am not surprised.”
Sharp also said the campaign between the four candidates vying for two seats in the November election will be a good, clean race.
“We all have what’s best for the city at heart,” he said. “We each have a different way of getting to the top of the mountain. We all want the same thing for the city, it just depends on how we get there.”
Harrow, 48, is an architect and a member of the city’s planning commission. She received 798 votes, about 18 percent of the vote.
She was very pleased with the results, but said she was not surprised by the top four.
“This has made me hopeful for the upcoming election,” she said. “The one thing is to make sure people are more informed for this upcoming election.”
She also said the campaigns will stay about the same tone they are now.
Beard, 45, is an education and training representative for General Motors Corp., and is chairman of the planning commission.
He said being in the top four feels great, and while the candidates are all qualified, it will be a tough campaign. Beard received 768 votes, about 18 percent of the vote.
“If I am clear on my message the vision that I have for the city and if I can knock on enough doors I will be on the next city council,” he said.
Beard said he thinks the race will continue to be an intense door-to-door campaign.
“The candidates are going to have to describe very clearly what they bring to the city and what their vision is,” he said.
Only 9.33 percent of East Lansing’s registered voters turned out at the polls. A mere 2,611 votes were cast among the 37,988 registered voters.
“It’s an issue of voter apathy,” said Mike Bryanton, county clerk of Mason, where the votes were tabulated because of a vacancy in the East Lansing clerk’s office.
The four candidates who did not advance to the November election were Nick D’Isa, 9 percent; Shane Waller, 3 percent; Matt Mitroka, 2 percent; and Mark Van Remortel, 1 percent.
Shannon Murphy can be reached at murphy78@msu.edu.
