Tuesday, June 11th 2013, 7:23 am
Tulsa voters narrowed down the candidates for mayor to two Tuesday.
The election was non-partisan for the first time, but that only meant the party affiliation of the candidates didn't appear on the ballot. It was really two Republicans against a Democrat, and in the November runoff election, it will be between one Republican and one Democrat.
That's when voters will choose between incumbent Dewey Bartlett and former Mayor Kathy Taylor. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Taylor won 42 percent of the vote, while Bartlett got 34 percent.
If one of the candidates had gotten more than 50 percent of the vote, it would have been decided and the winner would have gone on to take office in December. Since neither did, it will be decided in a runoff.
Bartlett voted Tuesday morning, after a campaign where he talked a lot about continuity at City Hall and his work on improving the business climate.
He and Taylor were running against Republican Bill Christiansen, a former city councilor, who disagreed with many of Bartlett's decision's when they were both at City Hall.
Christiansen claimed to be the populist in the race, pledging to run the mayor's office with lots of feedback from the public. At the end of Tuesday, Christiansen got 23 percent of the vote.
He offered his concession before his supporters at the Southern Hills Marriott and endorsed Bartlett Tuesday night.
Kathy Taylor, another former mayor who served a term before Bartlett, will have another shot at the job in November.
Taylor has spent the campaign promising to get Tulsa moving again. She's telling voters Tulsa's progress is not what it could be with her as the city's chief executive.
The Election Board says there were a few glitches early Tuesday, but overall things went pretty smoothly in Tulsa County.
"There were a few machine issues, but always, that's just the nature of the beast," said Shelly Boggs, County Election Board Assistant Secretary. "We're going to have a few that they have to replace. And it was typical--not a lot, but a few, and we took care of it."
6/7/13 Related Story: Voting Begins In Tulsa For Mayor, City Auditor
Also on the ballot is the race for city auditor. Three candidates are in that race: incumbent Clift Richards, Cathy Criswell and Joshua Lewis.
Criswell and Richards will face each other in the runoff primary election on August 13, and the general election is November 12.
In Tulsa County, Republican District 3 voters will see four candidates on their ballot: Brandon Perkins, Ron Peters, Don Crall and John Wright.
Peters got 35 percent of the vote. Perkins trailed him by 3 points.
Peters will face Democrat John Bomar of Tulsa on August 13.
The election will fill Commissioner Fred Perry's unexpired seat. Perry announced in February he was retiring effective July 8.
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