Dickinson mayor picked from hat
A suggested arm wrestling contest was ruled out as away to decide the runoff tie
DICKINSON — At Dickinson City Hall on Thursday night, democracy was put on hold in favor of two pingpong balls at the bottom of a black top hat.
After a Dec. 15 runoff between mayoral candidates Jennifer Lawrence and Sean Skipworth resulted in a deadlock — a recount Tuesday confirmed that each candidate received 1,010 votes — the city decided to leave the winner up to chance. In accordance with state law, the fate of the contest would be decided by a random drawing of names out of a hat.
“I do want to thank the candidates for doing it this way,” said Julie Masters, the current Dickinson mayor, whose term will end next week. “We had several options, we had several folks who had ideas on how we could do this, including arm wrestling, but I thought this was probably the best and they agreed.”
This unlikely scenario was put into play after a four-way race between Lawrence, Skipworth, Mark Townsend and Jon Junemann resulted in none of the candidates receiving a majority of the vote on Election Day.
The December runoff initially left Skipworth with a three-vote lead over Lawrence, though that tiny margin vanished after provisional, absentee and overseas ballots were counted. In the end, the tally showed that both candidates had received the same number of votes.
So on the race went to a drawing of the lots.
In front of a small, masked crowd of about 50 people — most of whom watched from the hallway of City Hall due to COVID-19 protocol — Lawrence and Skipworth each wrote their name with a Sharpie on white pingpong balls and placed them in a black top hat. Mike Foreman, the Friendswood mayor and soonto-be president of the Galveston
County Mayors and Council Members Association, stuck his hand in the hat and pulled out one of the balls.
After a pregnant pause, Skipworth identified the victor: “That’s my name,” he said, and immediately hugged his wife and children.
Both candidates embraced as well, showing no hard feelings despite a less than satisfying conclusion to a hard-fought race. Even Foreman, whose unbiased hand determined the ultimate victor, was pained by the result.
“To do all that work and have it come down to picking a pingpong ball out of a hat … it hurts,” he said.
The look of relief in Skip worth’s eyes was visible, even with half his face covered by a polka dot face mask. He said he did nothing special to brace himself for the drawing, instead distracting himself Thursday with mundane activities — reading a book, watching television — anything to keep his mind off the possibility of losing.
“You say some prayers here and there, and hope other people are rubbing rabbit’s feet for you or something,” he said.
Skipworth will be sworn in as the new mayor on Jan. 12when the City Council will convene for the first time in the new year. He said his first order of business as mayor would be putting a city manager in place before getting to work lobbying state lawmakers on tax code issues before the start of the legislative session.
“(Changes) to the sales tax are going to affect us a lot and we need to get together and figure out how we're going to talk to the lawmakers, and try to make sure that that doesn't hurt us,” Skipworth said.
Across the hall, Lawrence held court with friends and supporters. She said after the drawing that she was mentally prepared for the possibility of a loss, though pleased that thecommunity came together and put to rest any possibility of lingering tension.
“I had peace,” Lawrence said. “I just knew that either way, it's meant to be, I'm a very ‘meant to be’ girl. Things have happened in my life, and I know they have a reason.”
A day after armed insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol in violent objection to President-elect Joe Biden’s general election victory, Skipworth added hewas heartened that even in a nonpartisan election in a small city like Dickinson, two candidates can walk away gracious in victory and defeat — even by random chance.
“Hopefully, this is a reminder to everybody that in America we resolve our differences and move forward,” Skipworth said.