St. George • City planner Steve Kemp and incumbents Jimmie Hughes and Dannielle Larkin are the early leaders in the race to fill three seats on the St. George City Council, according to the preliminary results released Tuesday evening.
Kemp, the chairman of the St. George Planning Commission, has 22.53% of the vote thus far. Council member Hughes is squarely in second with 22.03%, while Larkin is third with 20.55%. Challengers Paula Smith and Brad Bennett are currently fourth and fifth, with 17.51% and 17.39% respectively.
If the results hold when all the votes are counted, Smith and Bennett will be out of the running in the high-stakes race some are calling St. George’s most contentious election season ever. Only the top three vote-getters will win a seat on the council.
Kemp was pleased with the early vote returns but said he was far from ready to declare victory.
“I assume there’s a lot of votes left to be counted, so I’m not taking anything for granted,” he said. “At this point, I’m letting the people at the county clerk’s office finish their job and patiently waiting for them to count every vote.”
Marred by vandalism and divisive and heated rhetoric, this year’s bitterly contested campaign has divided the city into two competing camps. In one corner are Larkin, Hughes and Kemp, who are backed by Mayor Michele Randall and have said they would stick to traditional municipal matters and steer clear of controversy if elected.
In the other, Paula Smith and Brad Bennett — supported by Council member Michelle Tanner — are eager to tend to traditional business but also haven’t shied away from weighing in on the cultural side of the divide by talking about drag shows, Second Amendment rights and changing the name of Utah Tech University back to Dixie State University, among others.
Early returns in Tuesday’s election also show strong support for a $29 million general obligation bond for recreation on the ballot. Nearly 65% of voters thus far have voted for the bond, almost double the 35% in opposition. If approved, the bond would fund 33 city projects over the next seven years, including the construction of five new parks and significant upgrades to existing recreational facilities.
