Stephen Santellana was accompanied by more than 60 people at the Wichita Falls Country Club Tuesday night while they waited for the election results to be announced.
Hopeful spirits — accompanied by spirits — filled the air in anticipation, and at 10:06 p.m. the hopeful thoughts became reality.
“I’m absolutely thrilled,” Santellana said after reading the election results. “I’m thankful for the full staff behind me.”
On top of his full staff Santellana’s parents, his wife and his kids joined him.
When it came down to the race many supporters expected him, but Santellana kept his eye on the prize.
“People throughout the race told me I had it, and that it was in the bag,” Santellana said. “But, I was told early in the race to keep the petal to the metal and run the race like your in second place. So that’s what I did.”
Even after the commotion of the party Santellana kept his progressive message strong.
“I’m looking forward to progressing the city,” Santellana said. “It’s going to that a little bit of progressive thought and vision to get things growing.”
Santellana continued in depth on his vision.
“I want to see growth in downtown, and industry overall,” Santellana said. “I’m going to be hyper-focused there.”
Tim Ingle, MSU 2013 graduate with a master’s in business administration and other mayoral candidate, noted that despite the lose there will still be some good.
“I enjoyed getting to meet a lot of new people,” Ingle said. “There are good things in store for the city, and I am happy at the amount of voters that turned out.”
During the campaign Stephen outspent Ingle almost 6:1.
“I think we ran what we could as far as money goes,” Ingle said.
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