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Mayor Yvonne Johnson, who lost her seat last night, sent along a Facebook message to supporters today.

My Dear Friends and Supporters,

Please know that you have my heartfelt thanks for your encouragement and support during the campaign. I so appreciate the many people who contributed resources and time during these last few months.

We worked hard, yet there were clearly some areas that needed more concentration. I have loved serving Greensboro and each of you. In the coming months, I will find new ways to be of service to the city that has been so integral to my life.

I do not yet know how this new path will emerge, but I do know that God is in charge of my life and the life of our city.

You are dear to my heart. God bless you, and God bless our City.

Yvonne

In 2008, Guilford County backed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama with 58.78 percent of the vote. Sen. Kay Hagan, also a Democrat, won close to 62 percent of the vote. Greensboro contains the bulk of Guilford County's Democratic voters.

A year later, voters have given a majority on the nine-member Greensboro City Council to Republicans.

Republican Bill Knight upset incumbent Democrat Yvonne Johnson in the mayoral contest. Incumbent Robbie Perkins and newcomer Danny Thompson are both Republicans and won in the at large race. Republican incumbents and former county commissioners Trudy Wade and Mary Rakestraw also kept their seats. Zach Matheny is a registered Republican as well.

If that tally is correct, two-thirds of the city council are at least nominally Republicans. The current council had four Republicans and five Democrats if I count right.

Going from backing mostly all Democrats in 2008's statewide elections to electing a Republican city council majority is a fairly stunning turnabout in just a year.

My colleague, city council reporter Amanda Lehmert, will be writing more about that will mean policy-wise for the city. When I covered the city earlier this decade, council members would often say party politics didn't matter. I'm not so sure that's the case any more.

It's worth noting that candidates are not listed on the ballot as either Republicans or Democrats. But there's been a fair amount made in the last few days of party interference in the election, so it seems reasonable to expect some voters knew who had what affiliation going into the voting booth.

I'm curious what this says about the larger political landscape. Is this all about turn-out? Were Republican/conservative voters were more motivated so they showed up? Is this part of a larger trend? Virginia will have a Republican governor after Obama won that state last year. The New Jersey gubernatorial race is too close to call as I write this. Update: The Republican was just declared the winner in New Jersey.

Of course, closer to home, Democrat Anthony Fox won the open mayoral seat being vacated in Charlotte by long-time Republican Pat McCrory.

I am sure the GOP will paint this as a backlash against Obama. I'm equally sure that Democrats will try to brush it off as an anomaly due to turnout and the like. I'm not sure either party has enough data points to make a meaningful argument.

Still, in Greensboro, a city where the majority of residents are Democrats, this seems to me to be a fairly profound result.

‘Round the city today, there has been plenty of talk about the incumbent City Council members. In particular, the question is whether their positions are vulnerable.

Could they be ousted?

That remains to be seen. But here are some voting day fun fact about Greensboro’s mayors that may be a testament to the power of incumbents.

Since the city voters first began choosing the mayor at large in 1973, no incumbent mayor has lost a re-election bid. Before that the City Council chose the mayor, and there was turnover nearly every year.

Since ’73, the city has only had six mayors. The shortest length of serve was six years.
 

Scoop got a call today from voter Tony Wilkins – aka Busy Being Born blogger – reporting trouble at the polls.

Wilkins tried to vote for Bill Knight for mayor and the machine checked Yvonne Johnson instead.

He was able to correct it before the ballot was registered. But he raised an important question: are the machines incorrectly calibrated?

We checked in with Guilford County Board of Elections Director George Gilbert to find out.

He said the board usually gets one or two complaints to this affect every election, however he has not heard of any widespread problems this time around. Elections staffers at the polls are asked to check the calibrations on the machines if they get complaints.

Usually votes are registered wrong because voters touched the area just between the two candidates, Gilbert said. That can happen if you are looking at the voting touch screen at a certain angle – like if you are taller than the average person.

So some advice to tall voters: squat for accuracy.
 

Since being elected to City Council in 2007, Wade said she has focused on meeting the every day needs of the residents in her districts.

The one-term council member and former Guilford Council commissioner said she spends several hours every day making phone calls.

It’s the everyday things that are important — like getting streetlights turned on and speed limits changed, she said.

Wade said the key to getting issues resolved is having the at-large council members and the mayor involved with the issues, so that they will back her up and help her come to a quick resolution.

That’s been something she has learned in her first term — coalition building.

Wade has gotten her fellow council members on board with a plan to host a business summit to help open the lines of communication with small businesses in the city.

That will give the city and its economic development agencies a
“feel for what companies we have here and what will compliment those,” she said.

Wade was one of three council members who consistently pushed to have former City Manager Mitchell Johnson removed. Now that the council has hired Rashad Young to replace him, she would like to see the new city manager focus on resolving issues in the police department.

In her first term, Wade was also an advocate for flat taxes and water fees. She said she would like to continue that policy if re-elected.

In the next two years, Wade would also like to city create a long-term plan for dealing with waste water and water needs.

Wade said she will also advocate that the city do an efficiency study to see how departments can work better.
 

Here at the N&R, we're committed to making sure that what you hear from candidates is accurate. So here's the next in a series of occasional fact-checking that we'll do when we hear candidates making claims on the campaign trail.

We've been talking with Jim Kee, the District 2 City Council candidate, on the claims he's made of creating more than 100 jobs in his district.

"We’ve create over 100 jobs," Kee often says of his company, Kee Development.

So we figured that we'd ask just what, exactly, he means by creatign 100 jobs.

"I have two employees," Kee said of those who he directly employs. "Most of my employees are subcontractors."

Kee is a developer, so he hires companies to help build a home or otherwise. In that way, he helps pay for those jobs. Kee said that he counts the subcontractors that he's hired through the years as jobs he's contributed.

"I subcontract my work," he said, "and one of the main reasons is the health care."

Most any business owner would tell you that paying for insurance is expensive. So are worker's compensation claims, which often occur in contracting.

Kee said that he had a crew of four workers recently finish a deck addition.

"There are various people doing  various things," he said. Kee also told us that he hasn't built a home in eight months.

"We're looking to build 100 townhouses and another 10 houses," he said, but said the economy has made times tough for business lately.

It's that time of year again. Endorsement season.

The News & Record's editorial staff has been pumping them out all week, to culminate with the Natural Science Center bond and the at-large council candidates this weekend.

A couple of observations:

Nancy Vaughan, a former City Council member aiming for another term in office, has gotten a broad variety of endorsements, from the African American George Simkins Jr. Memorial PAC to the conservative Rhino Times newspaper to the firefighters association. It will be interesting to see if all those endorsements help her retain her lead.

Meanwhile, her opponent and Mayor Pro Tem Sandra Anderson Groat did not receive the Simkins PAC endorsement as she had the her last two elections.That could harm her chances in the city's 1st and 2nd districts. To combat that, this week she had a half-page ad in The Carolina Peacemaker, the city's African American weekly. The advertisement includes notes from religious leaders George Brooks and Howard Chubbs, saying that Groat has been a friend to the community.

Also throwing around their endorsements: former candidates Gordon Hester and D.J. Hardy.

Hardy, an at-large candidate who did not survive the primary, said he is backing Danny Thompson, Marikay Abuzuaiter and Gary Nixon. The three candidates are very different, both personally and ideologically. But Hardy says he backs them because they will bring a new attitude to City Council.

Hester has given the nod to Jim Kee, whom he was up against for District 2.

Scoop caught up with District 2 Candidate Jim Kee today. Last week his opponent Nettie Coad responded to the charge that she was too old to be a council member. Kee wanted to weigh in.

"I never said that. I don't know any of my people who have said that. Nettie is only two years younger than my mother and my mother is full of energy," Kee said.

Kee said he's asked his supporters to take the high road.

And now, another in our series of questions that we have asked the City Council candidates to pose to their opponents. Here are mayoral candidates Yvonne Johnson and Bill Knight.

Knight to Johnson: What are the reasons for your support of collective bargaining rights (unionization) for state and local employees?

Johnson: “Mediation and conflict resolution have been what I have been doing for a long time. Collective bargaining is no more than a process where management and workers come together and talk about working conditions, benefits, hours, hiring practices, whatever. ... I believe sitting together and working out these things is not only good and it benefits workers, but it also benefits the company.”

Johnson to Knight: What is the most difficult, highly public and controversial decision that you have ever had to make and what was at stake?

Knight: “We had a golf club, a membership golf club. Golf course economics have been in a downturn for some time. Rather than seeing the club fail financially, the membership was faced with having to make a choice. I happened to be president at the time. I presented the membership some choices and led them through numerous full membership meetings down to the point a vote was held and a decision was made … in this case to sell. That was the best solution.”