McBrayer, Massengale will head to runoff for Lubbock mayor

The Lubbock mayor's race is heading to a runoff.

Steve Massengale and Mark McBrayer, two sitting Lubbock city councilmembers, will compete for the seat after none of the six candidates in the mayoral race garnered more than 50% of the 30,878 votes in Saturday's municipal election, according to final but unofficial results.

McBrayer gathered 11,537 votes, or 37.36%. Massengale received 8,720 votes, or 28.24%.

The two will face off at the polls June 15.

"I'm real encouraged by the fact that I'm in first place," McBrayer told the Avalanche-Journal at his watch party Saturday night. "I think the original poll I saw I was only about 16% to (Massengale's) 36%. So for me to come up to (37%) is quite an accomplishment. … I was running against a lot of odds."

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McBrayer said that Lubbockites are hungry for change in the city's top leadership, an assessment he has focused his campaign on thus far.

"I wanted voters to focus on the differences between me and (Massengale). Basically, I believe that he is more of the status quo," McBrayer said. "It's more of a status-quo-versus-a-change election, and I think the voters are ready for a change in a new direction."

Massengale told the A-J he will also try to further distinguish himself from McBrayer.

"We're excited to be in the runoff," Massengale said. "With only two of us in the race, we will certainly work on delineating ourselves from Mr. McBrayer. The whole race will be completely different now that we've got two rather than six."

The candidate said he remains confident in the wake of what he called an "unprecedented election."

"I don't know of another time that we've had six people on the mayor's ballot," Massengale said. "The turnout is unprecedented around a candidate election."

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Adam Hernandez was the third-highest vote-getter with 6,307 votes, or 20.43%.

"I'm obviously disappointed with the outcome, but very proud of the work that's been done around this campaign," Hernandez said. "I don't have any regrets; none of us have really any regrets. We did all that we could do with the funding that we had, and we did really well against a very well-funded opposition who has a lot of connections in the city."

Hernandez suggested Massengale also represents the status quo, but for that reason said he would likely be the better choice in the runoff.

"Let's say Steve Massengale is our mayor. Nothing much changes and we know what to expect," Hernandez said. "If McBrayer wins, then that could be a different scenario because McBrayer has been openly in meetings talking about, just for the sake of lowering taxes, … that he was willing to cut parks, he was willing to cut libraries, he was willing to cut the health department. He's willing to do a lot of things that could really damage our community."

Stephen Sanders followed Hernandez with 2,193 votes, or 7.1%; Antonio "Tony" Renteria with 1,809 votes, or 5.86%; and Kolton Bacon with 312 votes or 1.01%.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: McBrayer, Massengale will head to runoff for Lubbock mayor