Recently appointed Local Government Association chair Erika Vickery has lost the mayoralty in Naracoorte Lucindale as a string of new faces emerge victors in the contested regional South Australian mayoral races.
Provisional results indicate that Patrick Ross won convincingly with almost 60 per cent of the primary vote over long-standing mayor Vickery.
Ken Maynard defeated Perry Will for the mayoral robes in Ceduna and Simone Bailey defeated incumbent mayor Dave Burgess and challenger Kevin Myers in Mid-Murray. Bailey's primary votes eclipsed the votes of the two men combined.
New mayors replacing retiring office-bearers include Liz Goossens in Tatiara and Trevor 'Nobby' Norton in Loxton Waikerie.
Incumbents returned included Bim Lange in the Barossa, Bill O'Brien in Light, Alan Aughey in a tight three-way race in Clare & Gilbert Valley and Karen Redman in Gawler.
A swathe of smaller councils including Streaky Bay will decide their mayor among the councillors once results are finalised.
Neither Robe or Kingston councils have elected mayors yet, with nobody nominating for the role in either council. Supplementary elections will be conducted early next year.
State Labor's amalgamation plebiscite, placed in a hurry before the Grant and Mount Gambier voters, went down like a lead balloon, even debating the topic rejected by 70 per cent of voters. Clare Scriven MLC, Labor minister acting as local government minister for Stuart MP Geoff Brock, said:
"The people have now spoken, and their answer is ‘no’. Therefore, the State Government will not be referring this proposal to the South Australian Local Government Boundaries Commission."
Opposition leader, the Liberals' David Speirs whose party had campaigned against the plebiscite as a potential harbinger of amalgamations further abroad in regional SA, said on Monday:
"This is an embarassing result for Peter Malinauskas. It just shows how city-centric and out of touch with regional South Australia the Labor Party is."
Long-standing Grant mayor, Richard Sage, was defeated by Kylie Boston for mayor, the challenger claiming almost 63 per cent of the primary vote.
The Grant council encircles the landlocked City of Mount Gambier.
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