Ezell Breaks Through for East Ridge City Council

Jeff Ezell will become East Ridge’s newest City Councilman after Tuesday’s election.

Ezell, who had unsuccessfully run for council several times, received 5,131 votes, or 37 percent of the votes cast. He will join Audie Witt, who voters returned for a third term. Witt’s supporters turned out, as the retired state employee garnered 4,945 votes.

Stan Allen, who served the city as Chief of Police for a number of years before retiring, got 3,409 votes. This was Allen’s first run for political office.

Incumbent State Representative Esther Helton-Haynes will return to Nashville for her fourth term to represent District 30, as she turned back Heather McClendon, a democrat running in her fist political race. The final vote tally saw Helton-Haynes with 19,443 votes (60 percent) to McClendon’s 13,123 (40 percent).

State Senator Todd Gardenhire will once again represent District 10 in Nashville, as he beat back a determined challenge from his Democratic opponent Missy Crutchfield. In the end, Gardenhire garnered 33,193 votes (53 percent) to Crutchfield’s 28,877 (46 percent).

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.