VIDEO: Lynn Spruill Says She’s Excited To Begin New Role As The Mayor Of Starkville

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI)-After several hours of counting ballots, Starkville knows its next mayor.

Lynn Spruill defeated Johnny Moore by a narrow margin of seven votes.

“Excited and hopeful,” expressed Starkville Mayor Elect Lynn Spruill.

Those were the emotions Spruill said she felt once she was declared as the new mayor of Starkville.

“I’m just looking forward to talking to people, and getting with the department heads, getting with the current board members, and the board members who are going to be coming back, because we know they are, and just kind of looking at at Starkville with a different eye,” said Spruill.

This will be Spruill’s second time running a city.

She served as the mayor of Addison, Texas, for five years.

Spruill said she’s eager to begin her role as the mayor of Starkville, but she also acknowledges a few challenges the city is facing.

“I think that we’ve determined from this that the community is somewhat divided, and I think one of my goals is to bring it together,” she explained. “We need to look at what people are interested in on both sides of the aisle, and work to make this a place where everybody feels good, feels comfortable.”

Committee members spent nearly three hours counting affidavit ballots Wednesday morning, but through it all, Spruill said she remained confident in the end result.

“Because it wasn’t anything I could do anything about,” she said. “I worry about the things I can do something about, not the things that are beyond my control, so at this point it was up to the commission to take care of counting those ballots and getting the affidavits done properly and they did that.”

Spruill and Moore ran a highly contested race.  Though things didn’t turn out the way he wanted, Moore said he’s appreciative of all of the support he’s received.

“It was real close I think we both put about as much effort if we both could into it, and will just see where goes from here,” said Moore.

Late Wednesday afternoon Moore sent this statement to WCBI:

“At this point, we just want to ensure that every vote cast was properly counted or rejected,” Moore said in a statement. “We have asked to review the rejected absentee ballots and some of the rejected ballots as of this moment.”

Spruill will officially be sworn in during the city’s first Board of Alderman meeting in July.