Mayor-elect G.T. Bynum and his wife, Susan, react to positive returns in a private room at his watch party at Stokely Event Center on Tuesday night. Photo by Michael Wyke
What a day — and we were there for all of it.
G.T. Bynum crushed incumbent Mayor Dewey Bartlett in Tuesday’s mayoral election. The 38-year-old city councilor received 55.8 percent of the vote to Bartlett’s 38.8 percent, according to unofficial results from the Tulsa County Election Board.
Bynum allowed The Frontier to follow him from the start of the day, which began with him waving to cars at 61st Street and Yale Avenue, and ended with him being elected Tulsa’s 40th mayor.
Photographer Mike Wyke captured it all. (View his slideshow below.)
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First, a few numbers. Bynum’s margin of victory was 17 percent, nearly double the 10 percent margin by which Bartlett defeated former Mayor Kathy Taylor in 2013. And that was considered a whipping.
(Click here for complete, up-to-date election results for all county and city races.)
When Bynum will be sworn into office in December.
Bynum’s great, great grandfather, R. N. Bynum, was Tulsa’s second mayor way back in 1898. Bynum’s grandfather, Robert LaFortune (1970-1978), and his cousin, Bill LaFortune (2002-2006), have also served as mayor.
Bartlett, it turns out, was the only incumbent city of Tulsa candidate to lose Tuesday. Councilors David Patrick (District 3), Blake Ewing (District 4) and Connie Dodson (District 6) cruised to easy victories.
That leaves just two contested council races to be decided in the general election Nov. 8. Incumbent District 2 Councilor Jack Henderson will face Vanessa Hall-Harper.
Two first-time candidates for City Council, Ben Kimbro and Eric McCray, will be on the ballot to fill the District 9 seat Bynum gave up to run for mayor.
City Councilors Karen Gilbert (District 5), Anna America (District 7) and Phil Lakin (District 8) are unopposed.
Fewer people turned out to vote for mayor Tuesday than did in the extremely expensive and hotly contested mayor’s race of 2013.
The Bartlett/Taylor election — held in November — drew 72,273 people, or 36.1 percent of eligible voters. Tuesday, just 57,583 people voted in the five-person mayor’s race, or 28.3 percent of eligible voters.
The newly elected officials take office in December.
