As polls were set to close Tuesday night in Springfield, the Greene County Clerk’s office told Ozarks Public Radio that voter turnout would likely be some 13% to 15% of those eligible. It was 11% at 5 p.m. in "bellwether precincts" around Greene County, Clerk Shane Schoeller said.
Thus, with 8,702 votes, business leader and Mother's Brewing Company founder Jeff Schrag was elected mayor of Springfield, defeating business leader and former Councilmember Mary Collette by double digits: 61.5% to 38.5%.
Collette earned 5,447 votes in the contest.
Schrag also won the campaign finance race. A week before the election, his camp had over $98,000 on hand, while Collette’s team held roughly $4,300.
Schrag saluted Collette in an interview with Ozarks Public Radio — early in the evening, before unofficial election results were known.
"Yeah, well, first of all, huge thank-you to the other candidate," Schrag said at his election-night watch party, held at the downtown brewery he founded in 2010. "Because we both ran positive campaigns to show that you can be positive in a campaign environment. What I did is I tried to reach the maximum people to tell them my message and my plan for Springfield, which is strong public safety, take care of the infrastructure, and see what we can do to make government more efficient."
At a separate interview at her own watch party — held at Cafe Cusco, a restaurant owned by her campaign adviser Joe Gidman — Collette said her bid to lead Springfield was a grassroots effort.
"I have run a grassroots campaign," she told KSMU early in the evening. "It has mostly been word-of-mouth. I've spent a little bit on postcards and yard signs, and I did some bookmarks and just made a lot of appearances. Went to all of the neighborhood association meetings, because I wanted my campaign to represent what I'm — the reason I'm running is is to increase sociability and livability in Springfield. And so it's really about the people, and it's about individual people. And I was hoping that my work in the community, that people knew me and they knew my work, and that that's was really at the heart of my campaign. So just a grassroots campaign to give give citizens more voice in their government."
Schrag said he was "humbled" by the "encouraging" and "gracious" public response to his campaign for mayor and said he's eager to dive into the work of governing the city, particularly in terms of the city's current effort to replace former City Manager Jason Gage, who resigned in mid-January.
"Step one is to get included in the city manager search," Schrag said, "and see where we are and do the absolute best job we can to hire the best person to be city manager for Springfield. Then there's the onboarding and the introduction, all the things that go along with making a candidate successful as they start the job. Second thing is continuing to refine my rapport with the other members of city council, because the mayor is a member of council, and working well with the other members is the next-most-important thing in the job. I think next, make sure you're managing the manager."
