Election 99: Ferraro will face runoff

Jace Radke

Wednesday, May 5, 1999 | 9:51 a.m.

Four-term Boulder City Mayor Bob Ferraro was close to securing a fifth term Tuesday night, but Councilmen Robert Kenneston and Bill Smith took just enough of the vote to force a June 8 runoff.

"I would have liked to have gotten the 50 percent tonight and eliminate the need for the general election, but with three council members running, I wasn't sure if I'd get it," Ferraro said from his home Tuesday night.

Ferraro garnered almost 49 percent of the vote while Kenneston and Smith finished just 38 votes apart. Kenneston, with 25.93 percent to Smith's 25.08 percent, advances to the general election.

"I had a nervous moment there, but I never stopped campaigning, and I think that helped me," Kenneston said.

If Kenneston can capture Smith's supporters, he could upset Ferraro to become the first mayor in Boulder City to be elected by the people, and the first to serve a four-year term. The mayor has always been a councilman who was appointed to the mayoral post by the City Council.

"I'll continue to do what got me here, going door to door, hitting the streets and talking to the voters," the 60-year-old Kenneston said.

Despite his loss, Smith, 73, remains on the council to serve out the remaining two years of his four-year-term.

Ferraro, 63, plans to reintroduced himself to voters who may have opted for Kenneston or Smith in the primary, and says this will be his last term as mayor if elected.

Incumbent Councilman Bryan Nix managed to move on to the general election in his bid for re-election to one of two open council seats. Nix took 24 percent of the vote, but he came in second in the primary to newcomer Dr. Joe Hardy's 31 percent.

Hardy, 49, grabbed the top spot behind his platform of saying yes to golf course development and no to the general election's land-lease ballot question.

"The voters sent a message that they appreciated the way my campaign was run and the messages we were trying to bring across," Hardy said Tuesday night.

Nix, 45, said that he finished about where he expected.

"Most of our work has been geared toward the general election, so we're ready for the next step," Nix said. "We'll be getting out and talking to every voter about our message of moving Boulder City forward and not backward."

Tom Whelan and Ned Morang also advance to the May 8 council election with 17 and 10 percent of the vote respectively. The top two vote-getters among the four candidates in the general election will win council seats.

Whelan, a 37-year-old small-business owner, plans to focus on picking up votes from supporters of the three candidates who did not move on Monday night.

"The three candidates that failed to move on tonight were the other candidates that were against the status-quo," Whelan said. "So we're going to be talking to those people and to the early voters who may have not known who I was when they voted."

Morang, a 58-year-old retired city electrician, says he will talk to his supporters and see what they think he should do since he came in fourth.

"We got in there, but I thought I'd do better," Morang said. "I want to make sure that I'm not taking votes away from any of the candidates who are against the land-lease ballot question because that will really hurt the city if it's passed."