By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Jim DeReus will retain his District II seat on the Del Rio City Council with a clear victory over challenger Arturo Rodriguez in Saturday’s city election.
DeReus garnered a total of 629 votes to Rodriguez’s total of 359. The totals are unofficial until they are canvassed by the Del Rio City Council.
DeReus waited for the announcement of the election results outside the historic Val Verde County Courthouse after the polls closed at 7 p.m. Saturday.
The unofficial results of early voting in person and most mail-in ballots were announced a few minutes after 7 p.m. Those totals showed DeReus with a strong early lead, which he never relinquished.
After the final results were announced, DeReus spoke with the 830 Times about his re-election bid.
“I really appreciate the support that I got from everyone. I hope I can continue representing them, not always doing what they think I should, but at a minimum, asking the tough questions because if – whether you’re talking the elected official and the constituent or two council members – we’re agreeing 100 percent of the time, we’re probably not being critical enough in our thinking. But hopefully I’ve shown, over the last four years, how I approach things and what my mindset is and what those big-picture ideals that I have are, and I’d like to think that’s why people voted for me,” DeReus said.
He said time was one of the biggest challenges he faced during this election cycle.
“Much more so than last time, when I didn’t have all of the additional city things, with being the mayor pro-tem. The mayor’s job took him out of town, and so filling in at a lot of meetings, and then my own full-time job out at the base, other things that I’m involved in; time was the biggest issue,” DeReus said.
“With that lack of time, I didn’t go door-to-door as much as I did previously, and so the biggest thing was taking every opportunity I had to talk to people, whether it was seeing them one-on-one or talking to groups,” he added.
He specifically thanked his wife Sharon for her support and commitment.
“Obviously, you can’t do something like this unless your significant other is supportive and is willing to put up with, not only the time away campaigning, but then if you are lucky enough to get elected, all of the additional stuff,” DeReus said.
As an example, he said, on Sunday, “I’ll be sitting on my couch for a couple of hours going through the (city council) agenda for this coming Tuesday’s meeting and sending the city manager an email with all the questions I have about it.”
“So if he needs a little time to research those answers, that gives him time to be ready with that answer on Tuesday night, because one thing, if you ask a question, you want the answer, and then everyone finds out the answer to that question,” he said.
DeReus also spoke about the importance of local elections.
“In general, local elections, in this case, city council and hospital and school board, probably have a bigger and more direct and definitely more immediate impact on people – and we’ll see what the final voter turnout numbers are, but it’s going to be somewhere around 10 percent, plus or minus, and with all of the different things, I think it’s unfortunate that more people aren’t involved.
“I’ve said many, many times that I don’t know what I don’t know. At that candidate forum that we had, I mentioned that I don’t go to the county or the city sports fields very often because my son is in college, and so, if there’s a problem on those, I need people to let me know, people who have kids or grandkids and who are going there every week and seeing, hey, there’s a problem with the irrigation or it floods or there aren’t enough fields, so when you don’t get that bigger turnout, it’s hard to know where the majority of people want the city to go,” he said.
“Because if I say, I want to go down this path, and I need to know if people think, ‘dude, you’re smoking crack,’ or if they agree that this is the way to go, and these elections are how you find that out,” DeReus said.
DeReus’ final words were once again to his supporters.
“Thanks to everyone who put their confidence in me, and I will continue doing my best,” DeReus said.
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Contact the author at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com
