Council candidate out but not down in Boulder City

It wasn't exactly "Dewey defeats Truman," but it did make for a disappointing Wednesday morning for Boulder City Council candidate Kathey Ditzler.

The hair salon owner went to bed Tuesday night believing that she had advanced to the general election in her first campaign for public office.

Twelve hours later, she found out she finished just out of the running.

"It was a little bit of a shock because I'd already started making plans about what I was going to do going forward" with the campaign, Ditzler said.

The confusion came because voters in Boulder City were asked to cast their ballots for two of 10 candidates in the City Council race.

Election officials did not take that into account Tuesday night when they announced attorney Linda Strickland as the winner with 27 percent of all votes cast and Ditzler in fourth place with about 12 percent.

In reality, Strickland's name was marked on more than half of the ballots cast by the 4,339 voters who took part in the election. As a result, she automatically wins a seat on the council, leaving the second- and third-place finishers, incumbent Karla Burton and challenger Travis Chandler, to battle it out for the one remaining seat.

Their names will appear on the June 5 general election ballot; Ditzler's will not.

Boulder City Clerk Pamella Malmstrom called Ditzler with the bad news about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Malmstrom explained the mistake this way: "We just missed it."

Ditzler said her friends and family took the news much harder than she did. She said she views it as a learning experience, just like the rest of her first political campaign.

"This doesn't put me down. If anything, it gives me experience to know what to do next time," Ditzler said. "You know what? This isn't over. I've got two years (until the next election). I will run again."