Chris Medlock weighs his options

Wednesday, March 8th 2006, 10:11 am

By: News On 6

Even though he was nowhere near Bill LaFortune in campaign dollars, Republican challenger Chris Medlock made it a very close race. He grabbed more than 11,000 votes, just 1,800 behind Mayor Bill LaFortune.

So what will Medlock and his 11,000 plus voters do now? News on 6 reporter Steve Berg finds out.

Well for starters, he says he's going to clean out his office. "And start looking for a job." Kidding aside, he says he's going to help the new District 2 councilor Rick Westcott make the transition into office and help council ally Jim Mautino in his general election campaign. But will he help anybody in the mayor's race?

For two years, he says, he's been critical of Mayor Bill LaFortune. "It's kinda hard to shut it off, it takes a few days for everybody to get out of that competitive environment and start considering what's best for the city." Even though he lost, with 11,000 supporters, he could still sway the election, but he says he's not sure if his supporters would vote for LaFortune even if he asked them to. "They're all pretty independent thinkers and one of the things they didn't like about Bill LaFortune was that he didn't seem true enough to the party line, so some would go with me, some would not, no matter what we said."

He says he got congratulatory calls from both LaFortune and Democrat Kathy Taylor, but says so far, neither has asked for his support. "I'm sure they're both hopeful of endorsement, but bottom line, i'm a party guy, and we'll see what happens."

He says it's hard not to wonder what might have happened if Randi Miller, the 3rd highest Republican vote-getter had not been in the race or if he'd had even a slightly bigger campaign war chest. "Yeah, if they gave the office to who was the most efficient with the dollars, we would have won handily."

Medlock says he's not interested in running for city council again. He says he might try private consulting and he expects he'll always be involved in politics in one way or another.