The rules for the Camp Verde mayor’s race allow for a candidate to win outright in a primary, avoiding a runoff, if they win 50 percent plus one of the vote.
Camp Verde’s incumbent mayor, Charlie German, got close. Of the 2,428 ballots counted as of press time, German received 1,210 or 49.84 percent of the vote, just shy of the 1,214 he would have needed to win outright.
As a result, he and second-place candidate, Town Councilwoman Jackie Baker, who received 1,071 votes, or 44.11 percent, will face off on Tuesday, Nov. 6.
Missing from the runoff will be Alex Goetting, who ran as a write-in candidate for mayor. While there were a total of 147 write-in votes in the Camp Verde mayor’s race, amounting to 6.05 percent of the vote, there is currently no tally of how many were for Goetting.
“I got into this race because the voices of the people and myself were being ignored by council, candidates and staff,” Goetting wrote in an email. “The campaign provided a platform for which those voices could finally be heard. In that regard, it was a landslide victory.”
Despite receiving fewer votes in the first round, Baker said she feels she can make up the deficit in the months leading up to November.
“If you’re going to enter the fray, you need to say ‘when’ I get elected, not ‘if’ I get elected,” Baker said. “I really have had so much encouragement, so much pleasantry and support that I will think positive until the very last count is in.”
Baker said she does not intend to change her strategy after the first round, and hopes to continue the fight to make her name and platform known to the citizens of Camp Verde. She said she is less well-known in town than the mayor, but hopes that the next two months will allow her to change that.
“He’s the incumbent, although I’ve been on that council for a very long time,” she said. “It’s so close I can’t even be disappointed in the outcome so far.”
Baker also congratulated Goetting for his efforts in the first round of the election.
German said he is not going to let Baker take his lead without a fight.
“It’s going to be after a hard-fought contest,” German said. “I’m not going to lie back and sit back. I’m going to be aggressive in my approach to people within the community, and I’m going to say, ‘These are some of the questions that you need to ask Jackie’: What is it that she has done and how has she gone forward moving the kinds of things that we wanted to do?”
Both candidates praised their opponents for running a clean race so far, and expected that to continue until November.
“I would like to thank the people who did support me,” German said. “And for those that didn’t, please give me the courtesy of taking a good hard look of what’s going on within the community, and if you like what you see, then consider to vote for me. I’d really appreciate that, the common courtesy of weighing both candidates against each other.”
Jon Hecht can be reached at 634-8551, or email jhecht@larsonnewspapers.com
