Voters in Myrtle Beach will select leaders for mayor and city council in less than two weeks after Tuesday night's unofficial election results ended in a runoff for mayor and two council seats.
Former Myrtle Beach mayor Mark McBride and current mayor John Rhodes said if they didn't think they could win, they wouldn't be running.
McBride said it is clear from the number of people who didn't vote for Mayor Rhodes that they want something different.
Rhodes said the outcome is going to come down to who people think will be the best person to lead Myrtle Beach. Rhodes said the next step for his campaign is to get with his supporters and map out a plan for the next few days. "We’ll probably do pretty much the same thing we've done and that's TV advertising and newspaper advertising, send out some mailers, make phone calls and pretty much you know that's about it."
McBride said when it came to the votes, he didn't want to lead the ticket, he wanted to be second. McBride said 96% of the time, the man in second place, wins. "Perhaps I wasn’t' the first choice but I’m more than happy to be the second choice. I'm looking forward to two weeks from now, I’m very optimistic."
Rhodes and McBride said the biggest issues in this race are the motorcycle rallies and taxes.
Glenn Morgan, who lives in Myrtle Beach and voted on Tuesday, said tourism, is a bigger issue to him. "They need to do something to help bring tourism back to Myrtle Beach, that would be the main thing to help keep the jobs going, keep the people employed, keep everybody happy and let’s make the economy boom down here once again."
Both candidates said they plan to reach out to the voters and maybe to some former candidates. Bill Howard, who received more than 900 votes for mayor, threw his support behind McBride just after the unofficial results came in. And both men said they have had some contact with other candidates. Rhodes said, "I’ve had some phone calls and that have asked to sit down with me to talk and I’ve been open to the fact that I would be willing to sit down and talk, so we'll just go from there and see what happens." McBride said, "I’ve been texting with some of the other ones, we're waiting to see what happens, we're actually trying to put together and announcement, so we're giving, I mean it's very had to lose and there are a couple of city council candidates who put a lot of time in."
The run off election is Nov. 17.
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