The top two placing candidates in Tuesday’s Palm Coast mayoral election, Cornelia Downing Manfre and Mike Norris, will advance to a runoff election this November. It shifts the mayoral election into high gear now that the candidates can direct their efforts to a one-on-one. Also changing: the incumbent mayor, David Alfin, has been ousted from office.
Along with Alfin, also eliminated on Tuesday were fellow challengers Peter Johnson and Alan Lowe. Lowe has waged three unsuccessful mayoral campaigns, on top of one stab at a City Council seat. Manfre had previously run once each for City Council and Mayor. Alfin’s first election win was on his first mayoral attempt following a City Council run in 2020, while Johnson and Norris were each running for the first time.
“Big win tonight!” Norris said on social media following his advancement. “Thank you for all of the support!! Let’s win this in November“. He was by far the highest-voted candidate on Tuesday, totaling over a thousand votes more than his nearest competitor. The last time a mayoral election came down to two candidates in Palm Coast, then-Mayor Milissa Holland narrowly won re-election over Lowe in the 2020 election.
The rise of Norris from virtual unknown to major candidate for mayor came through a steady rise in support, even as several other candidates entered the race. Norris filed early and began amassing petition signatures almost right away. He also invoked his veteran status and tried-and-true political slogans (‘I Like Mike’ is on his campaign signs) to separate himself and earn a spot in November’s runoff. As of Tuesday afternoon, Norris had the third most logged money on-hand of any candidate in the Flagler Elections Website, behind Alfin and Manfre.
“I’m very excited,” Manfre said on the phone after the results came in. “I’m ready to put together a really good team on City Council, whoever it’s going to be, and have us work as a team to review our budget and be sure that we’re getting our maintenance programs moving ahead. And I’m excited about finding a new city manager that has the experience that I’m looking for.”
In three political campaigns so far, Manfre has now seen her first major win – even if it doesn’t quite land her in the seat yet. She ran unsuccessfully against Nick Klufas in 2020, and then in the special mayoral election in 2021, falling to Alfin. She now appears to have built a larger coalition of support, or at least inherited a decent amount of the support Alfin appears to have shed since 2020.
remember folks Manfre is a realtor/broker. We had enough damage done because we had a realtor as a mayor and we definitely don’t need another one who will continue to ruin this city with more over development and no work on the infrastructure.
Norris for me.
Remember we want good paying wages here. Fast food and grocery stores do not cut it. We need someone with commercial real estate experience to get businesses and industry to come here and finally shed the bad reputation Palm Coast has. I am voting Manfre.