Politics & Government

Airriess, Kucera Jr. Clinch City Council Victories

Low voter turnout blamed on uncontested school board and mayoral elections.

Howie Airriess will serve another four years on the City Council and Gregory Kucera Jr. will fill an empty seat, thanks to Clawson voters.

Airriess and Kucera were campaign partners in the election, defeating candidates Brady DiAntonio and Todd Shattuck. Airriess won 39 percent of the vote and Kucera captured 38 percent. DiAntonio received 22 percent of the vote.

The official count for write-in candidate Shattuck wasn't immediately available because the Board of Canvassers has to review votes for write-in candidates, City Clerk Machele Kukuk said. However, Kukuk declared Airriess and Kucera the winners.

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Jessica Back, who ran unopposed for the lone school board seat, easily won that race, and Mayor Penny Luebs, who ran unopposed, was re-elected as Clawson's mayor.

Kucera will replace councilman Samuel Moore, whose term ends this year. "I'm not overly shocked," Kucera said after hearing the results. "I just want to help the city in any way I can."

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Kucera has regularly attended City Council meetings for the past eight years. When he heard Moore was not running for re-election, he said it was the perfect opportunity.

Airriess is looking forward to his second four-year term in office.  "I'm relieved," Airriess said Tuesday night from a victory party at his house. "I'm happy about it."

Airriess said he plans to focus on the city budget and offsetting the loss in state shared revenue. "We need more money in the city," Airriess said. "And we don't wanna cut city services."

Kucera said he'd like to work with the Downtown Development Authority to bring more businesses into Clawson. That would boost the city's economy, Kucera said.

Mayor Luebs said she was satisfied with the results of the City Council election.

"Howie's the incumbent and he has the experience in council work that will allow us to continue working on city issues," Luebs said. "Greg has been an observer at council meetings for many years so it won't take him long to get up to speed."

Voter turnout

City officials said voter turnout was 14 percent in Tuesday's election. Kukuk said the turnout was lower than expected. Kukuk predicted Tuesday morning that turnout would be 18 percent-20 percent which is average for a city election. 

Kukuk said the uncontested mayoral and school board races likely played a role in the low turnout. There are a total of 9,322 registered voters in Clawson and 1,316 voted on Tuesday.


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