NE Tallahassee Flexes Electoral Muscle, Propels Richardson to Victory

Northeast Tallahassee flexed its electoral muscles in the city commission race pitting incumbent City Commissioner Curtis Richardson against challenger Dot Inman-Johnson, propelling Richardson to a narrow victory.

The hotly contested race, which would have flipped control of the city commission to the progressive movement, was decided by less 1,200 votes.

The Numbers

Richardson received 42,020 votes (50.7%) of the vote while Inman-Johnson received 40,856 votes (49.3%).

A look at the numbers behind the race shows that voters in District 4 (Northeast Tallahassee) provided the greatest margin between the candidates than in any of the other four districts.

The Northeast favored Richardson by a margin of 3,082 votes – 9,307 to 6,225. Richardson won the race by 1,164 votes.

District 4 was recently referred to as home to a far-right ideology by City Commissioner Jeremy Matlow. However, the district is actually home to a political diverse group of voters with 40.7% registered as Republicans, 37.4% as Democrats, and 22.5% with no affiliation to Republicans or Democrats.

Richardson was able to appeal to a broad coalition and carried the district with 59.9% of the vote.

Richardson and Inman-Johnson split the District 1 (southside) and District 3 (Waverly, Piedmont area) vote. Of the 34,495 votes cast in those two districts, Inman-Johnson received 17,258 votes while Richardson received 17,237 votes – a margin of 21 votes.

Inman-Johnson won District 2 (FSU, Westside) by 1,137 votes and District 5 (Lafayette Park, Eastside) by 760 votes.

Richardson’s margin of victory in District 4 was twice the margin of Inman-Johnson margin in District 2.