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Plano: Davidson, Fang in runoff
By Kim Nguyen, knguyen@acnpapers.com
Plano residents will be going back to the polls March 20 for a runoff election between Plano City Council Place 3 candidates André Davidson and Cathy Fang.
None of the three candidates – Davidson, Fang or Doug Shockey – secured more than 50 percent of the votes for Saturday’s special election.
According to the Collin County elections department, barely 3,500 of Collin and Denton counties’ 144,300 registered voters cast a ballot Saturday to fill the vacant seat on the Plano City Council.
“I certainly look forward to the opportunity to have more time to talk to more people and get more information out there,” Davidson said. “The extra time will give us the chance to hold more forums to share issues, ideas and visions for Plano.”
With the extra time between now and the runoff election, Davidson hopes to hold more forums with Fang to get out into the community to discuss issues and share ideas and visions for Plano.
The runoff election is scheduled well after the March 2 primaries, which will work to the advantage of the two remaining candidates. The original three candidates found that their campaigns were so lost in the sea of primary campaigns for state and county seats that voters may not have realized that the two elections stood alone.
“Naturally, there will be quite a bit of focus on the primaries first, but after they are done, the focus will come back to the city council election,” Davidson said.
Shockey said he felt he ran a good campaign in his monthlong crash course in city politics.
“We had a late start but we started picking up steam at the end. Ultimately we just ran out of time,” he said. “I am happy for André and Cathy, and the council will do well with either one as a member.”
Shockey said the short timeline of the campaign process worked at his and the other candidates’ disadvantage.
“I don’t look at [the election results] as a loss, I just look at it as being in a different position than I was a month ago,” he said. “The one thing I would have liked was more time. We had a great message and a great response; I wish we could have shared it with more people.”
The campaign process, despite how short it was, gave him the opportunity to learn how city government works. The information he learned has opened a few doors for other avenues of community service, Shockey said.
“I want to be involved, but I don’t know yet to what capacity,” he said. “I met a lot of wonderful people and learned about a lot of groups. I will be taking stock of all this new information to determine where I can best fit in.”
Calls made to Fang seeking comment were not returned.
In November, Rep. Brian McCall made an informal announcement that he would not be seeking re-election for his District 66 seat in the state legislature. Not long after that, former Place 3 Councilwoman Mabrie Jackson announced she would resign her seat to seek candidacy for McCall’s vacant seat when he leaves in May 2011.
State law mandates that the city has 120 days from Jackson’s resignation to put on a special election to get a replacement to serve on the council through the rest of her term, which also ends in May 2011.
The council initially wanted to hold the special election concurrent with the March 2 primary; however, state election rules prohibit the city from doing so within 30 days of the primary. Late April would be past the cut-off date, and Jan. 30 was the latest date to put on the special election, so the council booked it. According to city officials, the cost for the special election is about $80,000.
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