Voters Say NO to Two of Three Old Guard in the at-Large Run-off

Megan Barry outpaced her nearest rival, Council fixture Charlie Tygard, by nearly 6,000 votes. This was a huge victory for ethics reform in the Metro Council. Fortunately, other old guard council members J.B. Loring and Ronnie Greer, both of whom seemed ethically challenged at times, failed to place in the top four places for open at-Large seats. Besides Barry's and Tygard's, the remaining open seats went to Ronnie Steine and Jerry Maynard.

That is fairly decent consolation from August's results from where I sit. To have had three of the four open seats go to Tygard, Loring, and Greer would have been backward and awful. Instead, Mr. Tygard's conservative old patonage approach to government would seem to be somewhat mitigated by the other four at-Large members, who seem moderate and even progressive compared to Mr. Tygard (Tim Garrett, about whom I don't know as much, won back in August and avoided the run-off).

The results seem to have more to do with new leadership, and they seem to have less to do with "experience" as some of the campaigns had suggested.