By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
THREE RIVERS — For the first time in over a decade, Tom Lowry will not be the mayor of Three Rivers.
On Tuesday, voters in the City of Three Rivers elected Angel Johnston to be the new mayor of Three Rivers, with the first-time challenger winning with a near two-to-one margin over the incumbent Lowry.
Unofficial results Tuesday evening showed Johnston winning with 63.79 percent of the vote (784 votes) compared to Lowry, who received 34.74 percent (427 votes). Write-in votes made up the final 1.46 percent (18 votes), with six votes confirmed to go to the write-in candidate, Nathan Walden.
With the victory, Johnston will be the first person not named Tom Lowry to hold the mayor’s seat since Allen Balog defeated Lowry in the November 2007 election by 10 percentage points. Balog would go on to serve two terms in office as mayor before Lowry won again in 2011.
Johnston ran on a platform of change and improving trust in city government, as well as wanting to make the city more accessible and transparent for residents and to address the city’s lead pipe situation. She has claimed the city isn’t doing enough to replace lead pipes and, in her words in an October interview, “fix this water” in the city, and that seeking out more grants and “reallocations” in the city budget would be needed to address the issue.
In an interview Wednesday, Johnston thanked those who voted for her, and said she looks forward to the next two years as mayor.
“It feels like the community is ready for change, and that everyone is ready for us to write the next chapter together,” Johnston said. “I’m looking forward to getting to know even more members of this community. It’s been so enlightening and so much fun as I’ve campaigned to get to know so many people, and I’m really looking forward to returning the power to the people’s hands.”
Johnston said expectations over the next two years as mayor are going to revolve around residents getting involved.
“I hope they can expect to see transparency, and that I’m going to do my darndest to get people involved. That’s the only way we’re going to make changes around here,” Johnston said. “It’s not about me, I’m not a one-woman show, I can’t do anything by myself. I need the community here. We need to do this together, neighbor by neighbor, hand by hand, and I think we can do it. In these two years, I want to see full city commission meetings, I want to see full inboxes for the commission and myself, and I’m ready for the city to show up for each other in the same way they showed up at the polls last night.”
As for Lowry, he ran on a platform of knowledge and experience in city government as he sought his 14th non-consecutive term as mayor, advocating for improvements to city communication and continuing work on addressing the lead pipe issues in the city. The owner of Lowry’s Books and More in Three Rivers and Sturgis had been hindered by a few controversies in the last couple years and months, though, most notably comments he shared from another page on social media in September following the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, as well as an ongoing land transfer dispute between him as a private citizen, Lockport and Park townships and the State Boundary Commission.
In an interview Tuesday night, Lowry said while he was “disappointed” in the results, he’ll continue to help out as much as he can in the city despite not winning the mayoral seat.
“I want to thank the citizens who’ve let me be mayor for 26 years, and just like I said when I lost the previous time, this is my home. I will always work hard for this community, I will constantly donate everything I can, constantly give my time and money away to people, especially to the poor and disenfranchised,” Lowry said. “I will continue to help people when they come in the store. People always know I have a good listening ear, and I help them and I try to help them find resources.”
Three Rivers City Clerk Leslie Wilson said a couple hours before polls closed at Riverside Church in Three Rivers that she estimated turnout was higher than that of the last off-cycle election in 2023, and had been “steady” all day. The 1,229 votes cast in Three Rivers were higher than in 2023, when Lowry defeated challenger Vernis Mims, which had 913 votes cast in the mayoral election.
There was a claim made by a couple of people on Facebook Wednesday that Johnston had worked the polls Tuesday, which would be disallowed by state law, citing a comment Johnston made on her campaign Facebook page under one of her posts that stated, “I closed the polls,” according to a screenshot. However, Wilson refuted that claim Wednesday to the Commercial-News, saying that Johnston was not an election worker for the city at any point of the day, and had been present as a member of the public after the polls closed at 8 p.m. to view the closeout process, which is allowed by law. Wilson added that one of the tabulator tapes from each precinct gets hung up in the public viewing area that provides unofficial results to the public on site, and that all precinct results were sent to the county by 8:30 p.m.
In other city elections, Torrey Brown and Pat Dane won uncontested re-election as At-Large and First District commissioners respectively, while Anthony Stanfill had 18 confirmed write-in votes for Third District commissioner to take the seat.
Once the election is made official, Johnston, Brown, Dane and Stanfill are scheduled to be sworn in prior to the next City Commission meeting Monday, Nov. 10 at 6 p.m.
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.
