Clark Public Utilities commissioner Nancy Barnes appears to have won her fourth six-year term, according to the latest vote tally by Clark County election officials.
Barnes now has a lead of 680 votes out of 116,794 cast in her race against retired firefighter Mike Lyons.
County elections supervisor Tim Likness said there are only about 700 votes left to tally — meaning Lyons would need to pick up almost all of them to win.
“It’s still theoretically possible, but they’d have to be like 99 percent for him,” Likness said.
A mandatory recount is not out of the question, however.
Likness said a recount is required as long as the margin is both less than one half of 1 percent of votes cast and a difference of less than 2,000 votes. The margin currently is 0.58545 percent.
Lyons all but conceded the election to Barnes on Tuesday.
“I would certainly congratulate her on her victory,” he said. “It’s pretty hard to beat an incumbent.”
Barnes had a different point of view, saying she eked out a victory despite voter discontent over a rate increase in August and general antipathy toward incumbent politicians.
“This was a terrible year to be an incumbent,” she said.
Lyons has some experience in razor-thin elections. In 1983, he ran in the primary election for commissioner of Clark County Fire District 4. Lyons finished tied for second with fellow candidate Conrad Geiger — each with 75 votes. Then-county auditor David Michener decided which candidate moved on to the general election by drawing a card out of a box normally used for jury selection.
In that case, Lyons came up short. Now, 27 years later, Lyons faces another tight election.
Likness, employed in the elections office since 1979, said he’s been involved with at least three tie votes over the years, but the chance of a tie has dwindled with a growing population and all-mail balloting.
“It’s a lot less prevalent now than it used to be,” Likness said. “The cities and towns in the county used to be a lot smaller. The turnouts were really low for some of these elections, and the districts were a lot smaller.”
Lyons ultimately got a measure of redemption from his first run for public office.
Fire District 4 subsequently merged into the broader Fire District 5. Lyons has served as a commissioner since 2000, when he was appointed to fill out the term of a commissioner who moved out of the area. One of the commissioners who appointed Lyons was none other than Geiger, who served on the board for 24 years.
Lyons has run twice since 2000, unopposed each time.
The PUD’s three elected commissioners oversee an entity that provides electricity for 183,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers and water for another 30,000 customers.
The position pays $1,800 a month plus benefits and a $104 per-diem when conducting business.
