Lauren Poe stood 5 feet in front of a projection screen. He had one arm around his wife and wore a blank expression as they waited for the screen to show the last of the election results.
“It’s like watching the ball drop on New Year’s Eve,” one of Poe’s supporters shouted as onlookers waited in silence.
The screen flashed. Poe won.
The future member of the Gainesville City Commission embraced his wife and told the 20 people in the room to “exhale.”
The race was finally over.
Lauren Poe was elected to the at-large 1 seat of the Commission Tuesday night with 5,713 votes — 56.64 percent of the total voters. His opponent, Nathan Skop, received 4,374 votes — 43.36 percent.
Poe is a Santa Fe College associate professor and a former District 2 Gainesville City Commissioner. Last spring, he lost his seat in a runoff with Todd Chase, a Gainesville businessman.
Skop is a lawyer and a former commissioner on the Florida Public Service Commission.
Regular elections on Jan. 31 ended with none of the at-large 1 candidates receiving a majority of the votes, so the race went to a runoff.
A total of 10,087 people voted in the runoff election out of 72,176 registered voters. In January, 12,213 people voted for the citywide seat. Fewer people typically vote in runoffs than in regular elections, said Supervisor of Elections Pam Carpenter.
Poe said he is ecstatic to take his seat on the commission on May 17.
“We only make decisions as a body,” Poe said. “It’ll be important for me to communicate what it is I can add to the discussion and listen carefully to what they bring as well.”
Poe and Skop have been neck-and-neck throughout the runoff. Each raised about $20,000 for their campaigns since Jan. 27.
Skop said he was proud of the clean, issues-based campaign he ran. He said he wouldn’t have run his campaign differently. He and about 20 of his supporters sat at high-top tables in Gator’s Dockside and watched the vote tallies come in on an iPad.
“It is what it is,” Skop said. “We are very proud of the fact that we elevated issues to the attention of the citizens of Gainesville. People are struggling to pay their bills and make ends meet, and we brought attention to that.”
Although he did not rule out participation in another election, Skop said he did not have plans to run in another race. As he discussed his plans, “Don’t Stop Believin’” played over the speakers.
Poe, who will continue to teach at Santa Fe College, will get about three months off before he begins his term on the commission. In the meantime, he said he plans to get acquainted with the city staff and finish chores around the house.
“My wife has left me a few honey-do lists that I haven’t gotten around to checking off,” Poe said. “Now, I finally can.”
Contact Adrianna Paidas at apaidas@alligator.org and Ben Brasch at bbrasch@alligator.org.
Lauren Poe celebrates after being announced as winner of the at-large 1 seat of the Gainesville City Commission on Tuesday night at the Supervisor of Elections office downtown.
Nathan Skop sits with campaigners and supporters at Gator's Dockside after losing the race for the at-large 1 seat of the Gainesville City Commission on Tuesday night.
