BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) -
Mayor Kip
Holden was re-elected to his third term in East Baton Rouge Parish by capturing
60 percent of the vote.
It
has been a historic session for him. He said he's going to build a Baton Rouge
that people have never dreamed of. He said he's got four more years and plenty
to do.
He also
announced a project called 'Team Baton Rouge.' He said he wants to get everyone
on board to try to do their best to tackle the city's problems.
There is
still lots of time left with this last term.
Holden was
very sentimental after the win.
"In
spite of all the things that went on and I'm not going to dwell on all of
those, but the people of Baton Rouge are big enough not to allow $300,000 of
negative campaigning change their course because they know this city is on the
right track and we will continue to move this city toward the right
track," Holden said. "But, the only way we're going to be able to do
it is if the council, mayor, business people and people of all walks of life
have to come in and make a definitive statement that it's time for change and
not just let it be lip service."
Holden said
there are still many problems to tackle, but added he is going to get right
into it. He was very happy about the BRAVE initiative targeting the 70805 zip
code. He pointed out there were no murders there in October, so he believes
that is starting to work.
He faced
three challengers. Councilman Mike Walker was the closest, getting 34 percent. The
other two candidates combined for 5 percent.
WAFB
political analyst Jim Engster projected Holden would win around 10 p.m.
Walker
took to the podium to give a concession speech shortly after the projection was
announced. He offered additional comments a little later.
"We've
got a wonderful team. We worked really, really hard," Walker said.
"We tackled the issues head-on. We brought out the right issues. And, we
debated the issues throughout in a proper manner that I liked. I'm very proud
of the way we handled our campaign and we did pretty good, quite frankly."
He was
asked about how he was going to do to work through the issues with the mayor
and the council to move things through in a positive light for the people of
East Baton Rouge Parish.
"I'm
still a councilman. I'm still mayor pro tem. I'm going to work closely with the
council over the next 30 days to peruse the budget that we got within the last
moment yesterday. No one really knows what's in it yet. So, we'll be looking
over the budget for the next 30 days and see what it is and what we might want
to do with it," Walker responded.
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