A race for a seat on a small Kentucky city commission came down to a literal coin toss this week. Annamary LeCornu and Felicia Greer each finished with exactly 104 votes in Tuesday’s election for the Hanson City Commission, splitting the vote for the fourth and final seat right down the middle. The two candidates met at the Hopkins County Clerk’s Office on Wednesday morning, where LeCornu won the toss and the seat.
Hanson sits in Hopkins County in western Kentucky, and Tuesday’s midterm ballot put five candidates before voters for four seats on the city commission. Teresa Anthony and Church Holzknecht finished with the most votes, while third-place finisher Emily Williams cleared the tie at the bottom of the ticket by just three votes, finishing with 107. Behind her, LeCornu and Greer ended the night dead even at 104 apiece.
Both women are familiar faces around Hanson city hall. LeCornu holds an incumbent’s seat on the commission, and Greer has served on the body before. Under Kentucky law, a dead-even race is settled by determining the winner by lot, which is how the two of them ended up standing in the county clerk’s office Wednesday morning waiting on a coin.
As 14 News reported, it had been more than a decade since the county last had to break a tie this way. “Yeah, so we looked it up and the last time we had a coin flip, a coin flip for an office was the Madisonville City Council and that was in 2010,” Hopkins County Judge Executive Jack Whitfield told the station. “So it’s definitely a rare occurrence.”
How the tie got broken is its own story. As The Messenger, Madisonville’s daily newspaper, reported, the Hopkins County Board of Elections had another unconventional option on the table besides the coin. “The county board decides whether this is settled with a game of poker or a coin toss,” County Clerk Keenan Woodruff said.
The board went with the coin. Woodruff explained that in the county’s last tiebreak, the candidates were a man and a woman, so the man let the lady go first. This time, with two women tied, they turned to ping-pong balls. “So we’ll do whoever draws the orange (pingpong) ball gets to call it,” Woodruff said, and Greer drew the winning ball.
Judge-Executive Whitfield handled the toss, telling the candidates he would let the coin hit the ground rather than catch it, and that whatever landed face-up would count. Greer called heads. The coin came up tails, and the final seat on the Hanson City Commission went to LeCornu. “Thank you, you ran with grace,” LeCornu said, shaking hands with her opponent. “In two years, you can run again.”
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This was not the first close race between the two of them. LeCornu beat Greer by a single vote two years ago. “We had really good candidates. All five commissioner candidates are really good. And they’ll work hard. So whether I won or she won, it would have been, it would have been a good flight, it’s a good fight,” LeCornu said.
Watch WEHT’s report on the Hanson coin toss here:
With the race settled, LeCornu turned to what comes next for the city. She said Hanson sits directly off Interstate 69 and is in the middle of rapid growth. “Also to encourage families and folks to move to Hanson. It’s a great place to live, a good place to raise your families,” LeCornu said.
Whitfield had a message for voters who stayed home on Tuesday. “It’s frustrating and it’s kind of sad that the turnout yesterday was below 50%, which is normal for midterm elections, but it definitely shows that every vote matters. You never know when it’s going to come down to just a few votes in something like this,” Whitfield said.
Hanson was not the only city in the Tri-State where a tied race had to be settled this week. In neighboring Muhlenberg County, the Powderly City Council race ended in a tie between Patrick Tucker and Ronnie McIntosh. The Muhlenberg County clerk’s office told 14 News the two are family members, and McIntosh conceded the seat to Tucker.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.