Swore, Gulick win; runoffs set for at-large and in District 3

Chuck Swore will return to the City Council after a two-year hiatus, and incumbent Kris Gulick easily won re-election to his district seat. But four candidates are now headed for Dec. 1 runoffs.

One runoff is in District 3 with council incumbents Pat Shey and Jerry McGrane facing each other. The other runoff will have Aaron Saylor and Don Karr vying for one of the two at-large council seats. Under the city's charter, runoffs are required if candidates don't reach a certain percentage of votes cast.

Swore, a 66-year-old retired executive at Acme Electric, served on the council's west-side District 4 seat in 2006 and 2007 before losing a re-election bid to Chuck Wieneke.

“Given the opportunity to reposition with the council, hopefully a team concept, I look forward to it,” said Swore, who gathered 11,497 votes, or 33.8 percent, in winning one of the at-large council seats. “Being on the outside for a couple years was very enlightening.”

Gulick, a 50-year-old certified public accountant and business consultant, trounced challengers Tim Pugh and Ryan Russell in the northeast Cedar Rapids District 1. He had 2,705 votes, or 64 percent of the votes cast; Pugh had 809 votes, or 19.1 percent; and Russell had 695 votes, or 16.4 percent.

“The things I've done over the last four years are things that I thought were important to citizens,” Gulick said.

Turnout citywide was 27 percent, with 23,510 of the city's 87,189 registered voters casting ballots. Turnout was 29 percent in 2005, the first year for the new council-manager form of government.

Shey left his at-large council seat to run in District 3, a district that straddles the Cedar River and includes precincts in southeast, southwest and northwest Cedar Rapids. He earned 1,709 votes, or 43.1 percent. McGrane, the District 3 incumbent, had 1,504 votes, for 37.9 percent. Kathy Potts captured 633 votes, or 15.9 percent.

McGrane, with $15,000 in union campaign funding, ran one of the most aggressive campaigns in the city elections. He ran television ads accusing Shey of skipping too many council meetings and distributed fliers accusing Shey of ethics violations. .

Shey, 50, said he is still bewildered by McGrane's “negative campaign” but is already planning for another month of campaigning that will start today. “I was outspent four to one, five to one, and I came out ahead,” Shey said last night. “I'll take moral victories any day.”

McGrane, 70, said he might have made a campaign mistake “here or there” but that he's still the man for the job. “I'm still the voice of the people, the grass-roots people. I'm flood-affected, and I just don't think Mr. Shey has been out there like I have,” he said. “We just keep right on campaigning.”

Saylor, a 28-year-old Realtor, said he's excited about the upcoming runoff election. “We get back out there,” he said. “We're going to have a couple of meetings (today). A month and a half into campaigning, I feel like I'm getting a lot better at it.”

Karr, 64, owned Affordable Plumbing and Remodeling before retiring and was a founding member of the Small Business Recovery Group after the June 2008 flood. “I'm excited about it because I only started this campaign four weeks ago, got in kind of late, and to end up second place just overwhelms me,” Karr said. “Now it's just get to work.”

Justin Shields ran unopposed for the southwest Cedar Rapids District 5 council seat.