Woodbury election

As the dust settles after the recent election, the results of one race really surprised city officials and others.

Sure, Republicans’ sweep in the Woodbury-area legislative races was a stunner. But on an even more local level, the returns in the Woodbury City Council election caught people’s attention.

Sixteen candidates were vying for two seats. Julie Ohs won re-election easily with 18 percent of the vote, but there was a close outcome for the second seat. Christopher Burns won with 10.62 percent of the vote. Burns had 3,359 votes, but just 174 votes ahead of Mark Wackerfuss, who finished with 10.07 percent and 3,185 votes.

Conventional wisdom suggested Burns and Ohs were leading candidates in the race, given their prior involvement with city government and name recognition. Even retiring Mayor Bill Hargis said he believed Wackerfuss “did stronger” than he had predicted.

Wackerfuss said he was happy with his showing, even though he was not elected.

“I’m pretty happy with how I did,” he said in an interview. “I’ve never run for political office before.”

Wackerfuss said he dropped 10,000 to 12,000 pieces of literature and did a lot of door-knocking.

The results were close, but not close enough to trigger an automatic recount.