(Shenandoah) -- It's four more years for Roger McQueen as Shenandoah's mayor.
Unofficial results from the Page and Fremont County Auditor's Offices show McQueen reelected in Tuesday's city-school elections with 562 votes--or 55.37%, to challenger Jerry Wageman's 448 votes--or 44.14.%. In an interview on "Election Night in KMAland" Tuesday night, McQueen was asked what made the difference in winning the hotly-contested race against Wageman.
"I honestly think the citizens of Shenandoah have seen what we've accomplished over the last four years as a city," said McQueen. "They're looking for someone up there that has experience, and leadership in running the city. I hope that was a lot of the reason why. We've got a lot of things accomplished, and we have a lot more on the planning board. Most of the ones I've talked to over the past year wanted to see us moving forward."
McQueen credits his campaign staff with helping accentuate the positive.
"We just tried to keep our stuff very positive," he said. "We wanted to show the progress that we've made in the things I've been involved with, as far as Vision Shenandoah, and just getting recently elected to the Iowa Mayor's Association--things like that. We wanted to stay positive. I'm in this seriously, and I take this job very seriously. That was our game plan from the very beginning."
McQueen indicates that innuendo in the social media made this campaign different than from 2021, when he defeated seven other candidates to win his first term as mayor.
"We didn't want to get down in the mud on it--and we didn't," said McQueen. "The social media--I could say a lot of things, but I won't. It's too bad. It was definitely not like four years ago when I ran. We were all respectful of each other. I think we were all pretty respectful of each other. but this was a whole different kind of a race this year."
When McQueen's second term begins in January, he'll welcome two new council members--Jeffrey Capps, who defeated incumbent Rita Gibson in the ward 1 council race, and Matthew Regan, who succeeds Toni Graham as council member at-large after defeating three other opponents.