kathy cottrell - News - The Coastal Star2024-03-28T11:21:05Zhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/kathy+cottrellBoca Raton: Thomson is council's new additionhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/boca-raton-thomson-is-council-s-new-addition2018-08-31T18:00:00.000Z2018-08-31T18:00:00.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;text-align:center;"><strong><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960812080,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><font size="3"><img width="750" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960812080,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="7960812080?profile=original" /></font></a></span></strong><em><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher (standing) watches as ballots are examined during the recount of the Boca Raton City Council Seat A election Aug. 31. There were 16 previously uncounted ballots. <strong>Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star</strong></font></span></em></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><strong><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">By Steve Plunkett and Dan Moffett</font></span></strong></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3"> A</font></span><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">nd the winner is: Andy Thomson!</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960807477,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="98" class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960807477,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="7960807477?profile=original" /></a>An agonizing 67 hours after the polls closed Aug. 28 and following almost six hours of recounting ballots by machine and by hand, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher declared that Thomson won Seat A on the City Council—by maybe 32 votes.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">Complete results were delayed by her computer’s programming, but Thomson is “clearly the winner,” Bucher said before her software spit out the final results.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">The almost-final tally was 7,929 votes for Thompson and 7,897 for Kathy Cottrell. Tamara McKee, the third candidate, had 2,133.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">“I’m thrilled to be in this position,” Thomson said from Scotland, where he and his wife, Joanna, are celebrating an anniversary trip they planned long before the recount was ordered. “Nobody would have expected it would have come to this.”</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">Thomson, who campaigned on a message of “responsible, managed growth,” is expected to often side with Mayor Scott Singer, who touted a record “of opposing overdevelopment” in this election, and Deputy Mayor Jeremy Rodgers, who attended both Singer's and Thomson's election night gatherings.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">Thomson said his narrow victory showed him voters are split about the city’s future. “I look forward to working together to bridge this divide,” he said.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">Council members Andrea O’Rourke and Monica Mayotte attended Cottrell’s election night watch. O’Rourke, who endorsed Cottrell early on, defeated Thomson in a sometimes-bitter campaign for Seat B in March 2017.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">Bucher said the recount ensures that the totals are accurate and that Thomson won. “I don’t want to be 99 percent,” she said. “I want to be 100 percent accurate.”</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">Bucher’s staff, since Election Day, found a bin with 16 ballots that were overvotes or undervotes that were set aside but not counted. No one can say how this happened, but her office’s attorney says it was definitely a mistake.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">“We should have done them Tuesday night,” said Andrew Baumann, Bucher’s attorney.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">Thomson won nine of the 16 votes and Cottrell won three. McKee got one; the others were tossed out by the canvassing board, which included Bucher and Circuit Judges August Bonavita and Bradley Harper.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">Cottrell and Thomson both received about 1,600 votes more than Al Zucaro did in the mayor’s race. Zucaro lost to Singer in a landslide, 63 percent to 33 percent. Zucaro's BocaWatch blog supported Cottrell, as it did O'Rourke and Mayotte before.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">A 19-vote difference, 0.1 percent, triggered the hand count of 1,518 undervotes and overvotes, ballots without a choice or with two or more candidates chosen. Most were undervotes and had no impact on the race.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">State law requires a hand count when the difference is 0.25 percent or less.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">On election night Cottrell held a lead of more than 200 votes after early votes were counted and again when about two-thirds of the city's precincts were tallied.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 13.33px;"><span style="margin:0px;color:#000000;font-family:Cambria, serif;"><font size="3">Her lead narrowed to 37 votes by 10 p.m. Two hours later she and Thomson were tied. Mail-in and provisional ballots counted near midnight gave Thomson first a three-vote advantage, then pushed him ahead by 19.</font></span></p></div>Boca Raton: Council race goes into overtimehttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/boca-raton-council-race-goes-into-overtime2018-08-29T16:19:06.000Z2018-08-29T16:19:06.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960806096,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960806096,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="435" alt="7960806096?profile=original" /></a><em><strong>ABOVE:</strong> Andy Thomson, here with his father, Tom, and wife, Joanna, called the close race for City Council ‘kind of hard to believe.’ <strong>BELOW:</strong> Kathy Cottrell (left) celebrates with council members Andrea O’Rourke and Monica Mayotte on election night. At the time she thought she won. <strong>Photos by Rachel S. O’Hara/The Coastal Star</strong></em></p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960806453,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960806453,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="438" alt="7960806453?profile=original" /></a></p>
<p><strong>By Steve Plunkett</strong></p>
<p><br />A squeaker of a City Council race that could shape development decisions — and Boca Raton’s landscape — for years to come had supporters on both sides anxiously waiting to hear who won. Only 3 votes out of 17,875 ballots separated Seat A candidates Andy Thomson and Kathy Cottrell.<br />“The supervisor of elections is still counting provisional ballots, so we don’t have a final number yet,” city spokeswoman Chrissy Gibson said as City Clerk Susan Saxton conferred with the city attorney early Aug. 29 over what to do. “We’ll provide a statement with the details ASAP.”<br />Under state law, the city’s canvassing board must order a recount when unofficial results show a candidate losing by 0.5 percent or less. In Cottrell’s case, the margin is 0.2 percent. <br />Saxton, who lost a 2001 City Council race by 2 votes, heads the city’s canvassing board, which includes City Manager Leif Ahnell and Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher.<br />Cottrell had a lead of about 200 votes after two-thirds of the ballots had been counted on election night, a tally that did not change on the supervisor of elections website for more than an hour.<br />The mood at Thomson’s election watch was somber. “It’s nerve-racking, as you might imagine,” he said as he waited.<br />By 10 p.m. Cottrell’s lead had shrunk to 35 votes. “It’ll be what it’ll be, but I’m confident it is what it is,” she said.<br />A little before midnight they were dead even, each with 7,872 votes and a third candidate, Tamara McKee, with 2,118. <br />“That’s kind of hard to believe,” said Thomson.<br />The last update at 12:31 a.m. put Thomson up by 3 votes: 7,879-7,876.<br />The Seat A winner will serve until March 2020 and then can run for two three-year terms.<br />Cottrell was endorsed by unsuccessful mayoral candidate Al Zucaro’s BocaWatch blog and introduced him at his first campaign fundraiser. City Council member Andrea O’Rourke, a former editor of BocaWatch, also endorsed her, and BocaBeautiful.org, which fights what it sees as overdevelopment downtown, urged voters to pick Cottrell “if you like the way Andrea O’Rourke and Monica Mayotte have conducted themselves as City Council members.”<br />Thomson, who campaigned as a “proven problem solver” and an “independent thinker with no ties to special interests,” lost a sometimes bitter 2017 council race to O’Rourke.<br />He raised $12,670 in the last 13 days of the campaign, including $1,000 checks from iPic chief executive Hamid Hashemi’s iPic Gold Class Entertainment, iPic Holdings LLC, Hashemi Holdings LLC and Premier Aviation of Boca Raton. That pushed Thomson’s total to $75,988 not counting a $20,000 self-loan. He reported campaign expenses of $73,213 through Aug. 23.<br />Thomson, an attorney who concentrates on resolving business disputes, had the same big endorsements as Mayor Scott Singer: the police and firefighter unions, the Chamber of Commerce’s PAC, Realtors, the Economic Council of Palm Beach County and the Business PAC of Palm Beach County.<br />Cottrell, a Boca Raton native and organizational psychologist, told voters her career included “large-scale problem solving and change management initiatives” for Fortune 500 companies. <br />Cottrell raised $2,800 in the Aug. 11-23 period, mostly sums between $50 and $250. Her total contributions were $23,638 and she loaned her campaign $30,000. Campaign expenses were $41,551.</p></div>