Dan Carbery won the Ward 6 Overland Park primary today. He won it decisively: over 48% of the votes in a three way race. The closest runner up, Ron Williams, had just under 28% and Dan Stock was close behind with just under 23%.

The night started out well for Carbery when the first ballots, the advance voting ballots, were posted to the Johnson County Election website: 44% for Carbery, 28% for Williams, 27% for Stock.

When the County website displayed the first election day results, a cheer went up at W.J. McBride's Irish Pub, where the Carbery grass roots campaign was having its election night get together. Carbery was holding at 44% with the other candidates splitting the remainder.

At this point, several of the volunteers for Carbery remarked how ineffective the opposition's strategy of removing Carbery's signs had been. Both Dan Carbery and Dan Stock had hundreds of signs removed, often to be replaced by Ron Williams' signs. Ron Williams', viewed by many as the "politics as usual candidate", was not having this problem. Carbery's campaign had been pretty certain this sort of vandalism would have little effect on a grass roots effort. The voting was bearing them out. Committed residents going door to door, calling their neighbors, replacing signs and getting endorsements of neighborhood associations appeared to be carrying the day against the tactics of vandalism.

Then the final votes came in and another cheer went up. Bob Reeder, who was performing at the Pub, announced the victory, to the raucous cheering of the audience.

Carbery and his grassroots campaign immediately began gearing up for the final election on April 1, which is expected to be a much harder fight, but one with a good chance of victory for Dan Carbery. [return to top]