Annise Parker won the runoff with 52.78% of the vote to Gene Locke’s 47.22%, amounting to an 11,000 vote margin [This is the corrected tally; see “What was Parker’s final margin?” above]. She grabbed the lead with the early vote and kept it to the end. A late poll supposedly showed Parker 12 points ahead, so the anti-gay campaign by Hotze may have made the race closer. While the election of an openly gay mayor will make national news, of perhaps more importance locally was the Chronicle’s observation that the outcome marked the first time in a generation that the candidate favored by the business community did not win. The simple explanation is that the better known and more qualified candidate won. As city controller,…
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