Voters in Westville’s 26th Ward chose experience over a promised new “collaboration” Tuesday as they returned Sergio Rodriguez to the Board of Aldermen for the fourth time, by a convincing margin.
Rodriguez defeated challenger LaShell Rountree 300 – 206 on the machine vote. (Absentees had not yet been counted at press time but would not change the outcome.)
Rountree, pictured reacting as the results were read, said voters had told her that the Westville incumbent had the connections they thought would better get things done for the ward.
Rountree, who promised to forge a new relationship with voters based on encouraging them to get involved, vowed to run again in 2011.
Rodriguez said this run was a little more challenging than his other three campaigns because it was longer. Rountree announced in April. “I walked that ward three times,” he said.
“I will continue to respond to the voters, and continue to try to reduce taxes. I will try to form more block watches and start up a community website,” he said. That proposal was one of Rountree’s campaign goals of community participation and taking the pulse of the ward on every important issue.
Rodriguez said he wasn’t planning on going that far. “I believe in personal contact with the voters,” he said.
Rodriguez, shown awaiting the results, thanked his constituents for returning him to his seat.
The defeat was difficult for Rountree, whose previously ubiquitous bright smile was replaced by tears during an interview after the vote.
“Yes, it’s hard,” she said of the defeat.
“People told me they didn’t know me,” she said. “I got a lot of they didn’t know who I was,” she said.
She said she planned to cure that with more community involvement.
“I’m planning to do things, such as join the ward committee and the Hopkins committee,” she said.
That committee was the result of the prestigious Hopkins School’s application to build a driveway from the Stevenson Road cul-de-sac to its maintenance shed. The school has withdrawn that application, at least for now, to be a good neighbor, and residents plan to form a committee to discuss mutual concerns with the school.
But through her tears, she was still plugging her campaign.
“It’s not about the connections you have downtown,” she said. “This is not a city built on connections downtown,” she said.
But she said she was extending an olive branch and would “absolutely” work with Rodriguez “to get things done.”
But tonight was a night of celebration only for Rodriguez.
Rountree had often talked about the party she was going to throw at a waterfront restaurant, win or lose. But in the end, when asked whether that party was still on, she just quietly said, “no, it’s not.”