Two Runoff Candidates Hope to Make History

Ad for Jim Ney Mecaskey as it appeared in the Amarillo Sunday News-Globe on April 23rd, 1961

With less than one week remaining until the June 24th runoff election for Amarillo City Council Place 1 and Place 4, two of the candidates on the ballot are hoping to make history.

When the votes were tallied following the May 6th election, Place 1 candidate Dean Crump and Place 4 candidate Claudette Smith each received the second-largest share of votes in their respective races. However, since the first-place finisher in each race failed to get 50% of the vote, both contests were sent to runoff elections.

While both Crump and Smith are starting out from behind, it’s not unheard of in Amarillo for a candidate to pull off a runoff win after starting in second. Still, out of the 35 runoff races for city office in Amarillo history, only 8 candidates who placed second in the first round were victorious in the runoff.

The bigger hurdle for each, though, is just how big of a gap they each need to close. In Place 1, Josh Craft earned 43.25% of the vote, about 10.17% more than Dean Crump. In Place 4, Les Simpson earned 45.20% of the vote, about 20.93% more than Claudette Smith. Out of the 8 races where a second-place finisher in the first round won the runoff, only one of those candidates was initially down by double digits.

In 1961, Jim Ney McCaskey defeated incumbent Stanley Blackburn in the Place 3 runoff. However, in the first round, Blackburn had earned 42.77% of the vote, which was 13.59% more than Mecaskey. So far, that election has proven to be a significant outlier in Amarillo history, as the next largest gap overcome by a second-place finisher was in 1967, when W. S. “Bill” Mays narrowly defeated Byron Reese after initially being down by 6.03%.

So, what happened in 1961 that led Mecaskey to make Amarillo history? The Amarillo Globe-Times wrote on the day of the election that “Mecaskey trailed Blackburn in the three-way general election and gained victory by picking up a substantial shift of runoff votes from original supporters of Glen Jones.” The Amarillo Daily News similarly wrote that “Blackburn led Mecaskey and one other opponent, Glen Jones, in the first vote, but results Tuesday indicated clearly that Jones’s support swung heavily to Mecaskey.” Both papers also noted that Mecaskey was the first resident and business owner from Northeast Amarillo to win a city election.

There were a few notable similarities between the 1961 election and this year’s election. The race for Mayor featured two city commissioners who ran for mayor, with both Jack Seal winning a decisive first-first round victory over fellow commissioner Wm. C. Boyce. In the May 6th election earlier this year, Cole Stanley, the incumbent in City Council Place 1, defeated Freda Powell, the incumbent in City Council Place 2. Both election each led to multiple runoffs, though in 1961, all four commission seats went to runoffs, while this year only two council seats are on the runoff ballot.

One key difference, however, is the fact that the first round ballots for this year’s runoff was far more splintered than the one won by Mecaskey in 1961. In the first round in 1961, there were only three candidates, while there were four candidates in the first round for Place 4 this year and a record-breaking seven candidates in the first round for Place 1.

If you have not yet voted, the final chance to cast an early voting ballot is Tuesday, June 20th, while election day is June 24th. Be sure to check out our runoff voter guide at AmarilloVotes.online before heading to your polling place. Whether or not history is made, we will have live election results on our website, AmarilloPioneer.com, on Saturday evening.