A longtime card player, Mike Bennett knows when a tie occurs in bridge, you just move on.
Not so in politics.
When the Bradenton Beach mayoral election ended in a dead heat Nov. 3 and the recount yielded the same result one day later at his office, Bennett pulled out a deck of cards. He told the two candidates, former Mayor Bill Shearon and incumbent Jack Clarke, they would settle the election in the manner determined the night before by the canvassing board, by cutting a standard deck of 52 playing cards.
This was the first time in the memories of Manatee County officials that an election was settled by cutting cards, possibly longer, Bennett said.
Cutting cards to elect a mayor? “Only in Bradenton Beach,” was the response from some people.
But Bennett knew his office was making history.
Bennett laid out the rules: They used a deck of cards bought earlier in the day. He would shuffle them. As the incumbent, Clarke would cut first.
Clarke’s drawn card would be returned and the deck reshuffled. Shearon would cut the deck.
High card wins.
To handle a potential tie, Bennett ranked the suits: spades, hearts, diamonds and, lastly, clubs. If the candidates drew an identical card, they would shuffle the deck and start over.
Clarke drew a 10 of clubs, a relatively high card, reducing Shearon’s chance of winning.
But Shearon drew the ace of clubs and Bennett declared him the next mayor of Bradenton Beach.
Though not the incumbent, it was Shearon’s second win of the mayor’s seat. He defeated John Shaughnessy by 17 votes in November 2013.
For Bennett, declaring a winner by lot was a first. But it wasn’t his initial involvement in Bradenton Beach politics. He was named a co-defendant in a lawsuit that sought to keep Clarke off the May recall ballot, based on a claim that Clarke’s resignation as vice mayor was untimely.
Clarke survived that battle and went on to serve five months as mayor after defeating Shearon by 13 votes.
In both the May and November elections, Bennett served on the canvassing board with Bradenton Beach city clerk Terri Sanclemente and city attorney Ricinda Perry. Their job Nov. 3 was to observe the election and make sure it was done properly. Their job Nov. 4 was virtually the same.
With Clarke and Shearon sitting at the canvassing board’s table and an audience of observers and media, Bennett said afterward it was essential that his office perform impeccably.
“Oftentimes when you have divided factions, everybody wants to make sure that their side was fairly represented,” he said. “Consequently it was worth it to us to go into more detail, to explain to everybody exactly what we were doing, so everybody knew it was on a very fair basis.”
Fair during the recount, Bennett is biased when it comes to encouraging people to vote.
There was one under vote — a ballot submitted without a vote cast in the mayoral race. Also, an unsigned absentee ballot may have included a mayoral choice, but was omitted from the tabulations.
A third invalid ballot, for which the voter did not establish residency before the deadline, was sealed in an envelope, to be opened by no one, probably ever.
Had they been properly cast, any of the three ballots could have made the card draw unnecessary.
“I want the message to get out there that you’ve got to vote,” Bennett said.
One vote can make a difference.
