Portsmouth Vice Mayor Bill Moody says the City Council seat he has held since 1998 has slipped away by 21 votes. Mark Whitaker, he said, came out ahead for the third seat on the ballot, and Moody's bid for an eighth term is over.
Moody put that assessment on Facebook on Thursday. WAVY reported the post, which still hedged the result: "I have learned that apparently I have lost my bid for an 8th term by 21 votes to Mark Whitaker." Vernon Tillage and Lisa Lucas-Burke won the other two seats.
From a 63-Vote Lead to a 21-Vote Deficit
Election night had Moody in front. Unofficial results gave him 12,755 votes to Whitaker's 12,692, the Daily Press reported. Whitaker was within the 1% threshold to call for a recount, and provisional and post-election mail ballots were still out.
Sixty-three votes, with those ballots uncounted, was a lead and a warning. WAVY noted that some outlets declared Moody the winner on election night anyway.
Moody says the recount reversed it. In his account, Whitaker leads by 21 for the third seat. Between that unofficial tally and Thursday's statement, he went from 63 votes up to describing a 21-vote loss.
The Term He Meant to Skip
He had not even planned to be in the race. Moody initially intended to pass on an eighth term. In May he told WAVY he had changed his mind because Portsmouth had too much going on for him to leave, especially waterfront development.
He ran for one of the three seats anyway. A return he tied to that development ended, in his telling, 21 votes short of another term to stay with it.
Seven Terms, Starting in 1998
The seat has been his for a long time. Moody was first elected in 1998 and reelected in 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022, seven consecutive terms. He was first appointed vice mayor in 2004 and was still serving in that role when he posted.
"Serving the citizens of Portsmouth for more than 28 years has been one of the greatest honors and highlights of my life," he said. He thanked the people who made the service possible, said he had tried to do what was right for everyone in the city, and said his love for Portsmouth and his commitment to its future would never end.
Ten Days, and Who Sits Next
He also criticized the wait. Moody said the local electoral system took 10 calendar days—nine elapsed days from the Nov. 3 election to his Nov. 12 post—to determine the outcome. Delays, he said, create mistrust, fuel conspiracy theories and undermine public confidence in democracy.
Election-night reporting had already marked this contest as one that could move. Whitaker was close enough to seek a recount, and provisional and mail ballots were not in the 63-vote lead. That does not settle whether 10 days is too many. It does explain how a seat can be declared on election night and described as lost by Thursday.
Moody remains vice mayor for the term he is serving. The lineup he described for the seats just decided is Tillage, Lucas-Burke and Whitaker. The distance between a 28-year incumbent and that third seat, in the count he is going by, is 21 votes.
