By PEGGY KING
Qualifying for elections in most of the cities throughout the three-county area ended Friday at 4:30 p.m.
City elections will be held Tuesday, Nov. 3 with advanced voting to begin Monday, Oct. 26 and continue through Friday of that week.
The Dispatch was unable to reach several city halls after the qualifying ended Friday, but it’s definite that Abbeville and Pinehurst will be having elections.
Abbeville will have a mayoral election as two candidates qualified for that position. Incumbent Gene Tomberlin faces opposition from Michael Edward Kling Jr.
Incumbent Councilpersons Carolyn Elsberry, Randy Gibbs and Ryan Tanner qualified with no opposition.
In Pinehurst, Josephine Greene qualified to run against Harold Bowden for one of the council seats there.
Larry Blackshear and Joe Williams will retain their offices as no one qualified to oppose them.
Arabi, Vienna, Pineview and Lilly will not be required to have city elections this year since none of their candidates has opposition.
Only incumbent Arabi Councilmen Robert Southwell and Walter Brown qualified for re-election. In Vienna, incumbents Beth English and Walter Brown are running unopposed.
Incumbent Pineview Mayor Hollan Wilson and Councilpersons Melody Brown, Catherine Lewis and Cindy Bloodworth Walls all qualified to retain their seats. None of them has any opposition.
Lilly had already reported that its incumbent mayor, Arthur Roney, along with Councilmen George W. Royal and Alonzo Daniels qualified with no opposition.
Final reports were not available from Cordele, Unadilla, Pitts and Byromville.
In Cordele, the seats currently held by Chairman Zack Wade and Commissioners Jeanie Bartee and Willie Colson are up for grabs.
Unadilla has three council positions that expire at the end of this year. Dexter Whittaker and Clint Shugart currently hold two of those. Tony Lester had resigned several weeks ago, and earlier in the week, only Meredith Lester had qualified to seek one of the available positions.
Three incumbents in Byromville also must seek re-election if they wish to hold onto their seats. Those are Mary Oglesby, Eddie Walker and Perry Fountain. No one had qualified Wednesday.
