Murray elected mayor of Greencastle

Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Greencastle's new mayor, democrat Sue Murray offers congratulations to her opponent, republican Steve Butts, Tuesday night after the election results showed her with the victory.

The race for Greencastle mayor ended Tuesday night in a decided victory for Democrat hopeful Sue Murray, but her opponent, Republican candidate Steve Butts, says he has no regrets.

"It's a major disappointment," the 57-year-old Butts told the BannerGraphic. "Quite honestly, being it's my first race, I thought we'd done better than we had and I thought we'd talked to more people.

"I'm a bit disappointed in the Republican turnout, but that's my fault for not getting them motivated to come."

The victorious Murray was all smiles after the vote tallies showed her on top with 1,054 supporters to Butts' 898.

"I'm humbled," she said. "I'm grateful for the people who have spent a lot of weeks helping me with this effort. I'm especially grateful to my husband who gets to be a real taskmaster at times and kind of keeps me directed.

"I'm grateful for the people who took the time to vote in this election because I think it's an important responsibility that we all have to have a say in our future and where we go."

The future, for Butts, will be to continue running his business and be a part of the community. He said he has no plans to run for office again.

"I am so pleased. I wanted to do this for years and I wanted a straightforward campaign," Butts said. "Thanks to Ms. Murray and her organization and mine, people were able to see, I think, the differences between us two, and obviously mine wasn't chosen.

"This was my shot. I planned it for years and obviously it didn't work out."

The future for Murray, on the other hand, includes completing the transition from her current job, which she has held for many years at Putnam County Hospital, and getting ready to lead the city. She said she plans to meet with city council members and get to know them better, as well as meet with every city employee and find out if any improvements are needed.

"My disengagement from (my current job) is going to be something that is going to take a little bit of time, but I have spent a lot of time talking about and thinking about what might happen if I had this opportunity come my way and now that I have, it's exciting," Murray said.

Also in the near future, Murray says she has a plan for the first 100 days in office and that she hopes to unveil the plan in the next few weeks.

Both Murray and Butts said they felt they ran positive campaigns.

"I really wish her the best of luck," Butts said of Murray. "She's run a straight-up race, done it with integrity and I appreciate that. That's the thing that pleases me so much, is the fact that it's been, to me, straight up and I think this is the way all of them should be run.

"You listen to the bigger campaigns and the only thing you learn is what the other guy cannot do. And that's no way to run a political system even though I lost."

Murray added, "I woke up this morning saying that at the end of the day, I had the chance to do this how I felt it should be done. Steve said he felt he had a chance to do it that same way and that there's nothing more that either of us could have asked for ourselves."

When asked why she thought she was able to gain the victory, Murray said, "I have to be hopeful that people thought about the candidates; that people thought about the directions that we might be going and that for the reasons that belong to each one of them, they made decisions on who might take us to those places they were hoping to go."

When she takes office in January, Murray said she hopes to address some of the ongoing projects in the community, such as People Pathways, Big Walnut Sports Park and the Hometown Alliance project.

"I think Greencastle's best and brightest days are ahead," Murray said. "I truly believe that, otherwise, I wouldn't be investing my time, my effort and my love in this community."

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  • Congratulations Sue!

    -- Posted by Geologist on Thu, Nov 8, 2007, at 10:42 AM
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