Buckland taking final seat on Gilbert Town Council
Courtesy Kenny Buckland
Kenny Buckland, front center with plaid shirt, and wife Dawn Marie joined Maricopa County Assessor Eddie Cook, right of Buckland, and wife Jenny along with other supporters and luminaries at a post-election get together. Buckland won a seat on Gilbert Town Council, and Cook was reelected as assessor. (Courtesy Kenny Buckland)
One of the quietest, most respectful political races on the local landscape ended for Gilbert Town Council candidate Kenny Buckland not with a final push for votes, but miles away from any polls at all.
Buckland decided to go hunting the Friday before Election Day through the weekend. He might have missed it all together but the hunt was successful so he came back Tuesday afternoon and went to the home of Maricopa County Assessor Eddie Cook, himself a former council member and the boss of Buckland’s wife, in the evening.
“It was basically, all the work is in now, let's just see how it tallies,” he said. “So it wasn't a celebration of victory or anything like that. It was just getting together for the hard work we put in over the last year on this campaign.”
But a day later, Buckland was receiving a phone call from his runoff opponent Aaron Accurso, conceding the tight race. Yet still, it wasn’t until the following Monday when the Maricopa County Elections Department was mostly done counting, that Buckland felt safe in believing he had won the seat.
“We got to be smart, and we have to be prudent, and we have to be patient, and it takes time,” Buckland said. “Everybody gets emotional and wants that instant need-to-know-now thing, but that's not how it works. So I've just tried to let God work on my patience, and I know in due time it was coming.”
But Buckland’s margin held fairly steady through the week. In the Nov. 11 release from Maricopa County Elections Department, Buckland led Accurso with 51,612 votes to 46,376, a margin of 52.67% to 47.33%. All counts are unofficial until the canvass is certified.
Accurso, a back-office manager for Poco Verde Landscape, but released a post on social media on the evening of Nov. 6 congratulating Buckland.
“While the results were not what I was hoping for, I am grateful that the election was about the issues and policies of our town,” he wrote. “This campaign has been about putting families first and keeping government in its lane. As we move forward I hope that the new council will keep these things in mind as they lead.”
Speaking to the Gilbert Independent on Nov. 11, Accurso said when he saw the Nov. 6 release, being about 4,000 votes and 5% down, he felt there wouldn’t be much change.
“I just really figured it wasn't going to swing one way or the other for such a down ballot race, and I needed to get it off my heart to respectfully concede or wish him well,” he said.
Buckland, a former Gilbert Police commander who is now senior director of strategic partnerships for Safety Services Company, said he will spend time preparing for his new role. As a former town employee, he already is familiar with some of the way the town works but still has much to learn.
“A lot has changed and there were areas that I didn't work in,” he said. “So I just want to do a lot of listening and learning, and I think that's what's best for the citizens so that I can hit the ground running effectively and efficiently as I can, make good decisions, apply critical thought and just start acting on good policy.”
It was a point of pride for both candidates that the race was driven by policy and not personality and lacked negativity. They had committed to each other, after a primary with a razor-thin margin among the candidates, that they would handle the runoff that way.
Monte Lyons won one of the open seats in that primary, while Accurso just missed a majority and a seat in that primary by 0.13%. But he barely finished ahead of Buckland and Noah Mundt then, too.
Scott Anderson won the mayoral election then.
Both hope that the race is a harbinger of better times for Gilbert, which has been rocked the past few years by council in-fighting and a slew of ethics complaints against council members, some of them from each other.
“In Gilbert, we've just seen way too much of the personal attack, and we were both very committed to not doing that at all and getting Gilbert back on track in the little bit that we could,” Accurso said.
Buckland said he thinks it will help going forward.
“I think that this council, I believe we're going to be very, very civil,” Buckland said. “I think what you saw in the past with ethics complaints and the requirements for mediation I pray are over and that we're just going to work together — just make good policy decisions for the town that deserves it so much.”
We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X.
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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