Dem Mayor Removed As ‘Winner’ After Ballot Recount
January 29, 2023 | California
It looked, for one brief shining moment, as if Potsie had pulled it off.
On election night last November, Anson Williams was up by about 100 votes, what in these parts counts as a commanding lead. There were still plenty of results left to tally in the hotly contested campaign for mayor of Ojai, California — where all of 3,604 ballots were cast in 2022 — but the 73-year-old former TV star was far enough ahead of his opponent, 59-year-old incumbent mayor and yoga instructor Betsy Stix, that a few days later Stix released a statement congratulating Williams on his victory.
Happy Days, it seemed, were here again.
But then this is Ojai, where local politics are as volatile as the recent weather. And as Williams and his supporters were about to discover, there’s a lot more going on in this quirky little spa town than hot stone massages and hikes around the Topatopa Mountains…. (Excerpt from The Populist Press)
