Tuesday night’s Jefferson mayoral election was as close as it could be, as former councilwoman Dawn Maddox edged out incumbent Mayor Jon Howell by a single vote.
Maddox tallied 1,278 votes to Howell’s 1,277 according to the final numbers posted Tuesday night by the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.
Maddox was challenging for the mayoral seat after resigning her council post earlier in the year amidst a controversy in the Jefferson Police Department. Maddox had expressed concern over the city manager asking the mayor and council to indemnify an officer who had previously been arrested by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for allegedly improperly showing arrest information to an unauthorized person.
“When I did my own research on that, I could not justify the indemnification,” Maddox said. “Unfortunately, we had already voted on that, and I felt that I owed the people of Jefferson an apology, so I publicly stated that on July 14, and I resigned my seat because I felt like we misused taxpayer dollars.”
Maddox said she wants to use the influence of the mayoral office to better the city.
“Whether that’s with [transportation issues], whether that’s looking into the ongoing issues that we have with lack of oversight at City Hall, holding our city manager accountable for projects where I know that we are spending taxpayer dollars two and sometimes three times, I want to put in the hard work to make sure that when I leave Jefferson, it will be better off than how I found it,” Maddox said in an interview prior to Tuesday’s election.
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