There were narrow margins to decide the Midway City Council and the Midway mayor’s race, which still may be up in the air.
Malcolm Williams and Stanley Brown Jr. finished in almost a dead heat in the three-way race for mayor, as Williams received 175 votes and Brown got 173. Kenneth Williams got 154 votes. There 502 total votes cast in the Midway mayoral race.
Midway city clerk Lynette Cook-Osborne confirmed Wednesday afternoon that there will be have to be a runoff between Williams and Brown to succeed Levern Clancy Jr. as mayor.
“I’m just waiting to hear back,” Williams said. “If they say there has to be a runoff, we’ll just hit it again.”
There were 11 contestants for the four city council seats, with two incumbents running and current mayor Clancy running for a council seat. The top four vote-getters were Annie Foskey, Janet Bryant Jones, Rhonda Thomas and Vernon Donovan. Donovan, with 185 votes, eclipsed incumbent Dr. Clemontine Washington by one vote and Clan by two votes.
Incumbent Henry O. Stevens Jr. finished with 121 votes.
Williams and Brown each gave up their council seat to run for mayor.
“God is good,” Brown said on election night. “I’m for the people and doing the right thing and being transparent, and I am going to continue to be just like that. We’ve still got a ways to go.”
Williams, the top vote-getter for the mayor’s seat, drew encouragement from the support he received.
“I got a lot of good responses, but a lot of times it’s hard to get them back out,” he said. “I felt good about the message. Communication was something we truly wanted to focus on with the citizens.”
Williams said he also made the youth and preserving the city’s history linchpins to his campaign.
There were 517 votes cast in Midway’s election and most of them — 315 — were done in early voting.
Former council member Melice Gerace received 140 votes, followed by Jamal McIver with 120 and Rudolph “Rudy” Campen with 71.
In the city council race, Jones had the most votes in early voting, garnering 149, while Foskey had 144 and Washington picked up 131. Thomas, with 81 votes, got the most of the 11 candidates on election day.