When voters decided Sarasota City Commission races earlier this month, more than 600 Republican voters who sat out an election in March cast ballots in one of two different contests. Still, the two Republicans running in the race, both incumbents, lost their respective contests. “In some ways,” reflected Republican Party of Sarasota chairman Joe Gruters, “it’s harder to get elected to the city commission in Sarasota than it is to get into Congress.

An SRQ Media Group analysis of the May 12 election returns in Sarasota showed that efforts by both major political parties did produce tangible results, but ultimately the get-out-the-vote efforts by professionals campaigns led to Liz Alpert’s defeat of Eileen Normile in the Sarasota City Commission District 2 contest and Shelli Freeland Eddie’s win over Stan Zimmerman in the Sarasota City Commission District 3 race. Results will be discussed this morning at a Where The Votes Are event at SRQ’s corporate headquarters on Pineapple Avenue. Doors open at 7:45 am; the event is free and open to the public.

Gabriel Hament, Alpert’s campaign manager, said Alpert certainly benefitted from support from the Sarasota Democratic Party, but also said some efforts credited to the party in fact originated from the Alpert campaign. “We brought the party with us to show how to run a field race,” he said. The fact Alpert personally reached out to so many voters made a huge difference, he figured. In the end, Alpert held an edge demonstrated in the March contest and won with 53 percent of the vote. And that was despite Republicans making enough voter gains that GOP voters outnumbered Democratic voters in the District 2 contest. Gruters was happy about the gains, but said it was no match the Democratic effort. He said the Republican party assigned somewhat to work on the campaign full-time for the last five weeks of the cycle, while Democrats staffed the whole season. And he also said the party put 65 percent of its efforts where they thought it was most needed, helping Normile overcome a vote deficit in District 2 rather than defending Zimmerman’s edge in District 3.

In the District 3 contest, campaign professionals working with the Eddie campaign noted record turnout by minority voters in the contest, especially notable as Eddie is the first black city commissioner ever elected outside of minority-heavy District 1. “Shelli is ‘elected proof’ that candidates – even in small close-knit races like this one – don’t have to choose between pursuing active, high-frequency voters and reaching out to disenfranchised minority voters,” said Christine Hawes, co-founder of Keen Campaigning. Of course, white voters still heavily outnumbered minority ones in the district, while Democrats increased a voter edge in the district in the contest. All of the efforts led to Eddie overcoming a 10-point deficit to Zimmerman and March and ending with a 7-point edge.