Apopka Election Results

I post this for my fellow Apopkans as we are all woefully underserved by the local media outlets.

If you watched any of the news channels last night, you got more than enough coverage of the primaries up in Mississippi and the Spitzer prostitution scandal up in New York. But, NOTHING was mentioned on the city council elections in the fastest growing municipality in Orange County. (Incidentally, for ye media buffoons, we are second only to Orlando in population around here. That's a lot of viewers/listeners/readers you're ignoring!)

Anyway, the polls were busier than I had ever seen yesterday. And, the Supervisor of Elections confirmed that this morning. We typically have only a pathetic 5% turn-out for municipal elections in our fair town. But, this go-round we had a "whopping" 12.5%!! Wow, huh?

The bottom line is this: both incumbents retained their seats on the city council.

Bill Arrowsmith handily defeated retired schoolteacher Millie McBee, 60% to 40%. The senior councilman probably would have run unopposed if he hadn't voted against the proposed development of a new town center near the intersection of 436 & 441 back in December. Fortunately for him, McBee's campaign failed to focus on this weakness. She was all over the place, proposing committees to study race relations, traffic congestion, code enforcement, and new businesses. Too many mixed messages distracted voters from the one issue on which she really could have hammered her opponent. And, nobody likes bureaucratic committees around here. We want leadership.

Kathy Till did even better against former city employee Sammy Ruth, 66% to 34%. Her victory may be in part to her support of the new town center project. But, more likely, I believe most of my fellow Apopkans were turned-off by Ruth's ongoing feud with the city's chief administrative officer Richard Anderson.

Anyway, that's the spin from Apopka this morning. Thought I'd let you know since the Orlando media likes to ignore us, and The Apopka Chief won't be in print til Friday.