Defeated Decatur commission candidate Eric Tumperi believes an email written by former Mayor Bill Floyd had at least a “potential impact” on Tuesday’s election.
Distributed five days before the election, Floyd wrote that Tumperi and John Ridley were “running on the same negative and divisive platform,” while also saying “there is nothing positive in [their] comments or positions.”
Ridley was a decisive loser to Tony Powers (4,300 votes to 609) for the at-large seat. But Tumperi lost by only 128 votes to incumbent Scott Drake for District 1 commissioner, getting 45 percent of the votes to Drake’s 49 percent.
Tumperi has spoken to Floyd since the email — they’ve attended the same church for years — but wouldn’t reveal their discussion.
“I still really don’t know what [the email] was all about,” Tumperi said. “Maybe it was a sign of stress.
“We had a lot of interesting [school board and commission] candidates with new ideas,” he said. “Seems to me Bill should be retired and enjoying some of these new people following in his footsteps. This whole culture of looking at our city with a fresh perspective, he helped create that.”
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