Mayor Jim Gray is surrounded by family as he speaks to supporters after winning re-election by more than 30 points.
Lexington, KY – Mayor Jim Gray easily avoided the first term downfall that had brought Lexington’s previous two mayors’ time in office to a close as he defeated former Lexington Division of Police Chief Anthany Beatty by more than 30 points, 65.24 percent to 34.76 percent.
“Re-election with 66 percent of the vote, and that is humbling,” Gray told supporters gather at Belle’s Cocktail House in downtown Lexington Tuesday night after his opponent had conceded the race. “There is no greater honor in our democracy than a vote of public trust."
Four years ago, Gray unseated first-term Mayor Jim Newberry by 6 percentage points while Newberry had ousted first term Mayor Teresa Isaac by 26 points four years earlier.
In concession, Beatty, a vice president at the University of Kentucky, thanked his family and the mayor while pledging to stay a part of the city he and others in his family have been sworn to protect as members of Lexington’s public safety team.
“Jim Gray is your mayor-elect, I just told him on the phone that we intend to do everything that we can do to make Lexington the best place to be for everyone,” Beatty told his supporters at The Club at Beaumont Center.
Gray supporters watching Beatty on TV applauded the former police chief’s words and expressed happiness along with Beatty as he told stories of his grandchildren and serenaded his wife with a clip and lyrics from the Four Tops’ hit “Ain’t No Woman Like the One I’ve Got.”
Gray lauded Beatty and the campaign the two waged for its civility and exchanging of ideas, which included 12 mayoral forums, five more debates – Gray pointed out – than the famed seven of the Lincoln-Douglas US Senate race in 1858. “In this election we didn’t tear each other apart as we tried to lift up our city,” Gray said on the podium.
The mayor said he will continue working to bring new jobs to Lexington, a hallmark of his first term in office, in which he said Lexington added 9,000 new jobs.
“We’ve got to keep creating jobs,” Gray told a gaggle of the press afterward. “People love Lexington, they want to move to Lexington, they want jobs in Lexington so we’ve got to be prepared.”
Now Gray looks to prepare for a new city council that will be headed by Vice Mayor-Elect Steve Kay who took the at-large council race by more than 1,700 votes over the second leading vote getter Kevin O. Stinnett who was term limited as a district representative to council. Kay, who will start his second four-year term as a council member at-large, and Stinnett will be joined as at-large members of council by Richard Moloney, a former district council member who also served in multiple executive capacities for Gray during his first term as mayor.
Incumbent council members Harry Clarke, Julian Beard and Jennifer Scutchfield were defeated as was Chuck Ellinger who was running in the third district after being term limited as a council member at-large.