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Incumbents hang on to board seats
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By Sally Voth -- svoth@nvdaily.com
The incumbents in the two contested Shenandoah County Board of Supervisors' races held on to their seats in Tuesday's elections.
District 5 Supervisor Dennis Morris, a Republican, staved off a challenge from independent Mark Prince, who has dogged him over alleged conflict-of-interest allegations for several years. According to complete, but unofficial returns, Morris garnered 57 percent of the vote -- 1,292 votes to Prince's 941.
In District 4, support from 42 percent of voters was enough for Republican Sharon Baroncelli to stay in office. She had 905 votes, compared to 738 write-in votes -- 34 percent -- and 504 votes for Democrat Jim Fitzsimmons. Independent Cindy Bailey ran as a write-in candidate, but the number of votes for her was unavailable Tuesday night.
Morris attributed Prince's nearly 42-percent share of the vote to the recent real estate reassessments, which have drawn resident ire in the past couple of weeks, and voter dissatisfaction with government at the state and national levels.
"I'm not sure all the votes for Mark Prince were for Mark Prince, but were against the board in general," Morris said. "I think we need to try to get some information [regarding reassessments] to our constituents, which we, the board, have already worked on."
Prince doesn't plan on giving up his fight to expose what he says is wrongdoing.
"I think this vote of 42 percent shows that the people support my position and they feel that they're not represented, and I hope the next four years will demonstrate the need for this representation by the county," he said. "I want to make sure that this board knows that I'm still watching their every move. I think Mr. Morris ran a good race. He's a good politician, but he's done some bad things. And I'm watching, and will continue to watch."
Fitzsimmons pointed out that Baroncelli had more people who voted against her than for her, which is what happened four years ago, when she won 43 percent of the vote in a three-way race.
Baroncelli won about 42 percent of the vote in Woodstock, compared to 39 percent in Fort Valley, where nearly 41 percent of votes were for a write-in candidate or candidates. Fitzsimmons said he actually expected more Fort Valley votes to be for the write-in.
The Northern Shenandoah Valley is very strongly Republican, Fitzsimmons said, and he believes there was an "Obama backlash" among voters. He said he will "hold" Baroncelli to her pledge not to raise taxes.
For her part, Baroncelli was "very excited, very pleased" by her win.
"I appreciate the support and the trust, confidence of voters [that they] have placed in me, and it's a real positive future ahead for all of us to work together," she said.
Baroncelli said she's "right there with" her constituents in the tough economy. She said there was "a tremendous amount" of "misinformation" amongst the public in regard to reassessments.
"They don't equate to higher taxes," Baroncelli said.
Bailey said she appreciated voters who made the extra effort to write her name in.
"I think we made a strong statement to the board that this county wants representation, this county wants change in spending habits, [and] economic development needs to improve," she said.
In District 1, Dick Neese, who ran unopposed, had 1,548 votes.
The countywide turnout was 49 percent of active registered voters.
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