116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Corbett will be Cedar Rapids mayor
Ron Corbett has defeated City Council incumbent Brian Fagan to become the city's next mayor, according to tallies coming in to the Linn County election office.
Corbett won 14,642 votes, or 62.3 percent of the 23,488 votes cast.
Fagan won 8,385 votes, for 35.7 percent of the total.
A third candidate, P.T. Larson, won 421 votes, for 1.8 percent.
The turnout was 27 percent, with 23,510 voting. Some 87,189 voters are registered in Cedar Rapids.
Campaigning since March, Corbett, 49, vice president at trucking firm CRST Inc., talked repeatedly about what he has called the current City Council's “culture of delay,” and he said he would replace delay with a “culture of action.”
Fagan - at 37, the only one of nine current council members under age 50 - made the case that he and his council colleagues had worked hard and effectively and had built a solid foundation to make sure the city recovers and rebuilds from the June 2008 flood. Fagan, an attorney at Simmons Perrine Moyer Bergman, entered the race in late July.
Corbett raised some $101,000 for his campaign, almost three times as much as Fagan.
Corbett said he needed to raise more money to get his message out against a City Hall incumbent.
During the campaign, Corbett also secured endorsements from both business and labor.
The mayoral victory keeps Corbett's record intact. He has never lost an election for public office. He won seven elections between 1986 and 1998 to the Iowa House of Representatives, a run that included victories over Paul Pate and Kay Halloran, the immediate past Cedar Rapids mayor and the current mayor.
Corbett left the legislature – he was House speaker the last five years - in 1999 to take the job of president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce. In his six years at the Chamber, he was a high-profile community figure, pushing a school-bond vote, the merging of city and county governments - without luck - and the pursuit of state Vision Iowa funds. He led the citizen petition drive in 2004 that resulted in voters changing the city's form of government in 2005 from a full-time council to a part-time one with a professional city manager.
After the June 2005 referendum to change the government, Corbett left the Chamber and the headlines for a management job at trucking firm CRST Inc. He resurfaced on the public stage in March to run for mayor.
Corbett has said he will be visible mayor. He has said the current council has given the city manager too much power, and he said he will work to shift the balance back to the council.
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