LITTLE ROCK — North Little Rock’s Mayor-elect Joe Smith will be getting back to his job of managing the city today while also preparing to take charge as the city’s first new chief executive in 24 years.
Smith, the city’s commerce and governmental affairs director for 22 years, won Tuesday’s runoff election against state Rep. Tracy Steele with about 55 percent of the vote in his first political race.
“I’m a lot more in my comfort zone being the manager of the city than being a politician,” Smith said Wednesday afternoon during a whirlwind day of appearances. “I guess I finally, after 10 months, maybe started getting the hang of it by about October.”
The unofficial results from the runoff were:
Smith ............................7,535 Steele .......................... 6,234
On Jan. 1, Smith will become North Little Rock’s first new mayor since 1988. Mayor Patrick Hays didn’t seek re-election after six terms. Smith has been Hays’ top administrator for more than 20 years.
Being a political unknown when he announced his campaign in January, Smith’s election path was uphill against a 14-year state legislator in a four-man field during the general election. The extra three weeks for a runoff proved to be to Smith’s benefit to get his message across.
Steele, 49, a state representative and former state senator, had gotten 48.3 percent of the Nov. 6 general election vote to Smith’s 41.1 percent.
Smith campaign manager Vincent Insalaco said Wednesday that Smith and his supporters, including a surge in campaign volunteers for the runoff, determinedly worked to get their voters to the polls a second time.
“We knew we had about 10,000 who had voted for Joe in the general election,” Insalaco said. “We had to go back to those 10,000 and get a sizable portion of them back out to vote.
“We had people saying to us, don’t call me anymore, I’m going to vote for Joe,” Insalaco added. “In politics we call it a ground game. It’s just a question of talking to those people and talking to those people until they have voted. We knew if we could do that we could win.”
Terry Hartwick, president of the North Little Rock Chamber of Commerce and a Smith supporter, said the second-place finish in the general election “energized” Smith’s support.
“They thought they could just trot onto the field and win, like [the University of] Arkansas playing Louisiana-Monroe,” Hartwick said, referring to the Razorbacks’ first surprise loss this football season. “I think Joe got his voters energized.”
Smith agreed the energy level within his campaign picked up in the runoff.
“A lot of my supporters were taking the race for granted, for whatever reason,” Smith said. “Maybe it was because I wasn’t able to get my own message across to my own volunteers and supporters. After the general election it was, OK, we know what Joe’s been saying.
“I’ve never seen more of an outpouring of support,” he continued. “I bet our volunteer numbers have quadrupled in the last three weeks, compared to what they were in October.”
Smith campaigned on continuing the city’s progress, but worked more during the runoff to better establish in voters’ minds what he would do as mayor, Hartwick said.
“In a general election, there’s so much about national politics and judges’ races,” Hartwick said. “When it boiled down to just being Mr. Steele and Mr. Smith, I think a lot of people got to looking at the facts. Maybe that tipped the scales some.”
On Tuesday, Smith jumped to a 70-vote lead from early and absentee vote totals and built on that lead through the early evening with the end result coming quickly.
Looking at precinct-byprecinct vote totals in the 12 largest precincts, according to the number of registered voters, Smith and Steele split six and six.
However, going by the number of votes cast in those same 12 precincts, the turnout favored Smith in four of the top five sites.
“That was our voters coming back out,” Insalaco said. “More of our voters came back.”
Insalaco credited Smith’s campaign volunteers with making voters aware that their vote was important and getting as many as possible to go back to the polls.
“We never stopped,” said Insalaco, who added that he was “putting mailers together” on Thanksgiving night last week. “We had a leap in our number of volunteers. We had a huge number who came out and started waving signs and were knocking on doors and making phone calls. It was very humbling to see.”
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 11/29/2012