Conway elects first female mayor

Tuesday’s special election for Conway mayor was held because of the sudden death of Mayor Gregory Martin in September.

The unofficial results have Alys Lawson, with just over 50 percent of the overall vote as the winner.

The polls were open from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. and with 13 of 13 precincts reporting, Russ Calhoun had 89 votes with 5 percent, Vivian E. Chestnut had 360 votes with 19%, Alys Courtney Lawson had 947 votes with 51 percent, and Leslie H. McIver, Sr. had 450 votes with 25 percent.  The total votes count with absentee ballots included was 1,857, or 24 percent. City clerk Vicky Lefler said there are 7,694 registered voters in Conway.

Chairman of the Election Commission Linda Boyd said it appears Lawson is the winner and she doesn’t foresee a need for a runoff.  However, there are 25 fail-safe votes that still need to be counted, but Boyd doesn’t think they will change the outcome of the election.  Those votes will be counted Thursday at 10 a.m. at City Hall and the election results will also be certified.

After lots of congratulations and a sigh of relief, Lawson said she’s excited there won’t be a runoff.

“The first thing I’d like to do is rewrite design guidelines so that businesses developing in our historic downtown know exactly what’s expected of them and have a little easier time and I want to sink fund into building an indoor recreation facility immediately.“

After Martin’s unexpected death, all four candidates said the race did not happen in a way that any of them would have liked, but it is time to move forward.

Lawson said, “It’s hard to be excited about being the first female mayor of Conway when you come about it in such an awful fashion so I’ve tried to balance my duties with respect to his memory and now it’s time to be the mayor and move on.“

Lawson adds that while she’s confident the certification process is just a formality, there were people in Conway who voted a different way.

“I always try to reach out to the entire community and I don’t see any we, us, they, I think we all need to work together for the betterment of the city of Conway and that’s been my mantra for ten years and I’ll continue it, I’m sure there’s some folks here that are disappointed, but I will not treat them any differently than I will the people that marched the streets and helped me campaign.“ said Lawson.

A swearing in date has not yet been set, but Lawson said she would like to have to ceremony after the first of the year.

Another special election will be held in the spring to fill Lawson’s council seat.