After an additional month of campaign for the two mayoral candidates, former Tarrant County tax assessor-collector Betsy Price was elected the new mayor of Fort Worth over former councilman Jim Lane.
More than 15,000 people bared the heat in the warmest day of the year so far to cast their votes, and 19,435 casted their ballots in early voting. The early voting alone drew more votes than the 17,035 people who casted early votes before the general election in May.
Price, a republican, finished with almost 60 percent of the vote to Lane's 43 percent. Price was the top vote-getter in the general election in May with 43 percent of the electorate. Lane received 26 percent of the vote.
With 116 of 131 precincts reporting, Price had a total of 18,790 votes, and Lane had 14,671.
Lane conceded a little before 9 p.m., and said he wished Price the best of luck as mayor.
"As far as the process was concerned, I'm not going to be bitter, I never have been, and I wish Betsy the best, and she'll do great," Lane said in an interview with FOX 4.
Lane, a democrat who graduated from TCU in 1966, campaigned on his experience in the city council. Price's campaign was focused on her fiscal conservatism and promises to cut overall city spending.
Price will take over for Mike Moncrief, who has been mayor since 2003. He served four terms as mayor before announcing in February that he would not seek reelection.
Both candidates were interviewed on the TCU campus in April, and both spoke of how they wanted to continue city's support of the university as mayor. Under Moncrief's term as mayor he enacted Purple Fridays, where city employees were encouraged to wear purple the day before TCU football games. In 2009 Moncrief and city officials dyed a section of the Trinity River purple and renamed the "Horned Frog River."
Price specifically mentioned how as president of Paschal High School's Parent-Teacher Association, she was part of the group who founded the Berry Street Initiative, a campaign to bring new businesses and development to the area surrounding TCU.
"We worked on the beautification of the campus down there because it is a great segway into the university and into the zoological area, and then headed down into the cultural district," Price said. "We have to keep that Berry Street corridor strong."
