Copelof Wins Brevard Mayor's Race, Morrow and Baker Elected to City Council
Current city office holders, Maureen Copelof and Mac Morrow, captured the most votes in the two four-way races; Aaron Baker, running as a "shake it up" candidate, will fill the second council seat.
BREVARD — City Council member Maureen Copelof was elected as Brevard’s first new mayor in more than two decades Tuesday, while incumbent Mayor Pro Tem Mac Morrow and challenger Aaron Baker won the two open City Council seats.
The results are unofficial until certified, but the margins were considerable and the candidates accepted the results as conclusive.
“I’m actually ready to open a bottle of champagne with a couple of friends,” Copelof said Tuesday evening, and added that second-place finisher Dee Dee Perkins had called to congratulate her.
The competitive race for mayor, which attracted four candidates, kicked off earlier this year when longtime Mayor Jimmy Harris announced he would step down.
Leading candidates in both this race and the four-way race for the two Council seats created what amounted to a referendum on the city’s current leadership.
Morrow and Copelof ran on a record of city accomplishments in recent years, including improvements to infrastructure and construction of parks. City Council candidate Kevin Jones, who finished third, had also vowed to continue current city policies.
“If you look at the fact that I’m the top vote getter for mayor and Mac is the top vote getter for City Council, I think that says the residents of the town are very happy with the direction the city is going,” Copelof said.
“I’ve told the story out there, with Maureen and Kevin, that we wanted to build on the strong foundation we’ve established over the past four years,” said Morrow, who finished more than five percentage points ahead of Baker.
Baker and Perkins, a prominent downtown business owner, had called for new leadership, greater transparency and accelerated progress on goals including encouraging affordable and workforce housing and the construction of the city’s multi-use Estatoe Trail.
Baker called the tallies a “mixed result” because of his victory over Jones.
“I think that Brevard was looking for different representation. They were looking for a new perspective at the table,” he said.
He also said that he and Perkins, a former City Council member, seemed to bring new urgency to city action on the issues they raised.
“The fact that the elections were competitive and that they were longer than just a month or so, meant that we could actually talk about these things and get the public’s response,” he said.
Jones said he did not see his finish as a repudiation of the city’s current leadership, attributing his loss to his late start.
“I ran an October election and I ran hard, but it wasn’t enough to get me elected,” he said, adding that he would continue to be involved in community activities.
A widely discussed potential result — conservatives slipping into openings left in contests dominated by more progressive candidates — did not come to pass.
Registered Republicans Bill Bailey, who ran for City Council, and mayoral candidate Danny Hein both finished well behind the winners in the nonpartisan race.
“It’s okay. I got almost 600 votes,” Bailey said, and added that he had been told by a prominent county Republican “that it’s tough for conservatives to get votes in a city election.”
Even Bailey and Hein backed some of the general initiatives as more progressive candidates, including measures to support the construction of reasonably priced housing.
The one outlier was unconventional mayoral candidate Chuck Chapman, who called for less city involvement on a range of issues, and received fewer than 20 votes.
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