Republican William Cosgwell defeated incumbent Charleston, S.C., mayor John Tecklenburg in a runoff election on Tuesday, becoming the city’s first Republican mayor since the Reconstruction Era.
Cogswell, a moderate Republican who served three terms in the state house, defeated Tecklenburg by 569 votes, or 2 percent of the vote. The race headed to a runoff after Cogswell secured a plurality of the vote in the November 7 general election, but failed to surpass the required 50 percent threshold. The runoff race saw 30,190 votes cast, for a 27 percent voter turnout.
“We can confidently say that I’m going to be the next mayor,” said Cogswell, a real-estate developer who was endorsed by major South Carolina GOP players, including Senator Tim Scott. “The people have spoken, and we’re ready for a new direction … a new direction that puts labels aside, so that we can find pragmatic solutions to our problems.”
Charleston had become a reliably blue outlier in the red state, having last elected a Republican mayor in the 1870s. However, the mayor’s office is considered nonpartisan.
The major issues of the race included flooding, public safety, tourism and how to address the city’s population growth, according to the Post and Courier. One City Council district more than doubled in population between the last two census counts in 2010 and 2020, the report notes.
Cogswell attacked Tecklenburg over his response to riots that broke out in the city in the wake of the George Floyd’s death in 2020. In a television ad, Caroline Reynolds, the wife of late police chief Luther Reynolds, criticized Cogswell’s use of the mayor’s response to the riots as a political attack. She endorsed Tecklenburg.
Teckleburg conceded the race on Tuesday evening and called his eight years as mayor “the honor of my life” and asked his supporters to rally around the new mayor.
“I’d like to congratulate our new Mayor-Elect William Cogswell … and I’d like to ask each and every Charlestonian, everybody out there, to give him your support,” Tecklenburg said. “When Mayor Cogswell succeeds, Charleston succeeds, and that’s something we’re all in favor of.”