Nicholas Lillios is a member of the Bradley County School Board.CLEVELAND, Tenn. — Nicholas Lillios, a local businessman who defeated Melvin “Teddy” Bryson in a squeaker of a race for the Bradley County Board of Education District 3 seat, said Monday that he already feels “the weight of the office.
“I have a lot of folks counting on me, not just the ones who voted for me,” Lillios said.
The contest between Lillios and Bryson, a longtime educator, ended with a cliffhanger Thursday: Lillios led Bryson by one vote, while three provisional ballots for the race remained to be tallied.
On Monday evening, Lillios picked up one more vote out of three submitted provisional ballots; the other two ballots were discarded because of incomplete information. In the end, Lillios received 802 votes to Bryson’s 800 votes.
The county’s referendum on a wheel tax intended to fund capital school projects may have affected the race, Bryson said. As a lifelong educator, he said, he may have been associated with the wheel tax proposal that proved unpopular with voters.