It was no surprise that the County Commission voted last week to install Mitch McClure in the seat left vacant by Jim Coppinger’s appointment as the new interim county mayor. Indeed, Mike Carter, who competed for the mayoral appointment given to Coppinger, said weeks ago there was a “conspiracy” afoot on the commission to put Coppinger into the county mayor’s vacancy and for McClure to get Coppinger’s District 3 commission seat.
The fulfillment of Carter’s forecast does not necessarily provide proof that such a plot existed, or that a majority of the commissioners were party to such a deal, but it clearly raises that question.
The first move in the sequence Carter predicted came when Commissioner Fred Skillern confirmed that he would like to step down as chairman of the commission. That left the seat open for Coppinger, then vice chairman, to ascend to the chairmanship, and that positioned him, under state law, to be named the temporary interim county mayor when former mayor Claude Ramsey stepped down.
That, in turn, also put in motion the need to find a successor for Coppinger, which, under informal county tradition, would be someone whom Coppinger recommended from his district, and who thus would provide the fifth vote needed to appoint Coppinger as the permanent interim county mayor.
Until Skillern stepped down from the chairmanship, the commission had deadlocked in several 4-4 votes between Carter and Coppinger for the interim county mayor’s position (Coppinger, as a candidate, was not allowed to vote). Once Coppinger was elevated to the chairmanship and the outcome was framed, Carter, a former aide to Ramsey, took himself out of the running and Coppinger was elected by the commission as the permanent interim county mayor, to hold office until the 2012 countywide elections for the remainder of Ramsey’s four-year term.