Todd Stone won a second term Tuesday on the Oklahoma City Council, taking 64.3% of the vote in a three-way race to represent the southeast side.
Runoffs were set for the open seats in Wards 1 and 3 on Oklahoma City's western border after no candidate won more than 30% in Tuesday's primaries.
With all 37 precincts reporting in Ward 4, Stone had 1,075 votes. Sam Wargin Grimaldo had 430 and Larry Hopper had 167.
Stone, a small business owner, has built support through quiet community service, coaching youth sports and helping organize a project to build a bridge across a creek to give schoolchildren a safe way to reach Bodine Elementary School.
He succeeded longtime Ward 4 Councilman Pete White in 2017, in his
Oklahoma City's pandemic-fighting mask mandate generally was panned by candidates in Tuesday's city council primaries.
One exception was retired Lt. Col. Susan Parisi, whose military career included service as the chief nurse of the 301st Medical Squadron of the U.S. Air Force Reserves.
"We cannot, we will not, get out ahead of this deadly pandemic until people stop complaining about their personal rights being infringed upon and just help out your fellow human being and put on a mask," she wrote.
Sixteen of the 18 candidates in Tuesday's primaries in Wards 1, 3 and 4 responded to questions on restoring last year's cuts to the police operations budget, reforms sought by critics of police violence and the mask mandate.
Ward 6 Councilwoman JoBeth Hamon has compiled police department data to produce a map detailing the deaths of 66 pedestrians and six bicyclists in traffic accidents since 2018. The list includes 32-year-old Brittany Thompson, who was killed two months ago. Police said she stepped into a traffic lane and was struck on Northwest Expressway between Penn and May avenues at 2 a.m. on a Monday. Hamon said on Twitter she hoped the map could “be the beginning of better communicating the impact of traffic deaths and the importance of creating streets for people.”
Of note: Hamon also called out the five council members who voted to ask the U.S.