San Marcos City Council Swears In Newly Elected Council Members

Staff Reports

Two new city council members were sworn in Monday night following the canvass of the 2020 Election Results by the City Council.

In the November 3 Election, Council Members Mark Rockeymoore and Ed Mihalkanin lost their races for re-election to their seats. 

During Monday Night’s special meeting, the two were recognized by Mayor Jane Hughson for their service before their successors were sworn in. 

Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra was in attendance to provide the oath for newly elected council member place 3 Alyssa Garza.

Garza won the seat with 71.43% compared to incumbent Mihalkanin’s 28.57%. 

Shane Scott won City Council Place 4 with 55.11% of the votes, while Rockeymoore recorded only 44.89%. 

The San Marcos City Council will convene at 3:00 PM for their regular work session and 6:00 PM for their regular meeting with the new council members on the dais. 

The canvas and swearing-in ceremony comes just after the competition of a manual recount.

Mihalkanin requested a recount for City Council Place 3 election the same week and took to social media last Thursday to explain his reasoning for requesting all early voting and Election Day ballots cast within the City of San Marcos vote center locations to be recounted.

Mihalkanin said, “A number of people who have been involved in the civic life of our community for decades contacted me after the election. Independently of each other, they all said that the election numbers in the San Marcos city council elections did not make sense to them.”

“As someone who values our democratic process, I respect that my opponent has the right to question the validity of the results,” Garza said in a social media post.

Garza took the election for place 3 with 13,785, with Mihalkanin receiving only 5,514, according to the election results.

Shane Scott was declared the unofficial winner with 10,188 votes in the race against incumbent Mark Rockeymoore, who reported to have received 8,299.

“For the pairs of voting totals to make sense, over 4,500 people who voted for Ms. Garza, a few seconds later voted for Mr. Scott, who was her political opposite,” Mihalkanin noted.

“I am convinced that there was NO voter fraud in our just concluded election in San Marcos and Hays County,” Mihalkanin continued. “I have the highest respect for Jennifer Anderson and all of the people who work in the Hays County Elections Administrator’s office. They are all true professionals and did a great job supervising an election that saw an unprecedented number of people vote in our county and city.”

Hays County Elections Administrator, Jennifer Anderson, said she delivered the ballots for the race in question to the municipality Friday Morning, and the counting began around 9 AM.