Board of Aldermen to Be Filled With Familiar Faces After Election

Dave Thomas has some ideas for what he’d like to accomplish in his second term as St. Peters Ward 1 Alderman, but first he’d like to sleep.

Exhausted from weeks of campaigning and a late push to make sure he retained his seat on the Board of Aldermen, Thomas found out late Tuesday that the voters of St. Peters elected him for another four-year term on the Board.

“I started having bags under my eyes last weekend,” Thomas said. “I realized I hadn’t been sleeping for the past week. … I’m grateful for all the support. I’m glad the election process is over and now I’m ready to get back to work and serve our residents.”

In his first re-election bid, Thomas found out it’s good to be an incumbent. The April 14 meeting agenda won’t have to include a meet-and-greet item on the agenda. The current Alderman retained all four Ward seats.

Thomas took on two candidates in Ward 1 and vanquished both. Thomas picked up 892 votes (62.07 percent) to beat John Scherr (483, 33.61 percent) and Dolores Sherman (62, 4.31 percent).

“I look forward to serving another four years,” Thomas said.

The Ward 3 race was by far the tightest in St. Peters. Incumbent Gus Elliott held on to his seat by just 74 votes. Elliott picked up 783 votes (52.30 percent) to beat challenger Terri Violet (709, 47.36 percent).

“I’m relieved,” Elliott said. “… I had been paying attention to the lay of the land and I had a hunch that it was going to be a dead heat. She frankly had a lot more time to do the door-to-door work and that’s extremely valuable in a local campaign. I won’t lie to you; she probably did three times as much door-to-door work as I did. She was a door knocking machine.”

Elliott said he was able to retain his seat because of bipartisan support.

“I had a lot of strong support,” he said. “I had a lot of support on the left and a lot of support on the right. I had union support and I had Tea Party support. I absolutely want to thank every one of those people.”

Ward 4 once again belonged to Don Aytes. The long-time Alderman retained his seat by taking home 71.88 percent of the vote (846 total votes). John Durajczyk finished second in Ward 4 (223 votes, 18.95 percent). Bob Morrison was third (106, 9.01 percent). 

Judy Bateman easily won her Ward 2 seat. The current Board president picked up 644 votes (98.02 percent). Write-in candidates picked up 13 votes (1.98 percent).  

Muncipal Judge Donald Kohl also ran unopposed and picked up another win. He had 3721 votes, 98.67 percent.