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Anderson Wins Race for Fort Myers Mayor

Candidate's website

The race for Ft. Myers Mayor was extremely close, coming down to 53.35% to 46.65%, with Councilman Kevin Anderson as the winner. WGCU's Cary Barbor caught up with him.

CB: The race was pretty close. Did you expect that?

KA: I did expect it to be close. This was supposed to be a non-partisan race and my opponent turned it partisan. So we knew that was going to make it close.

CB: You're a retired police officer. How does your background as a police officer prepare for the job as mayor?

KA: Well, it's not just that I was a police officer. I rose through the ranks and was the #2 when I left. So I have administrative and operational experience from the police department. Then I went into the private sector, where I was in Sr. Management at Chico's. I worked on budgets and had to deal with human resource issues. Basically the company was like a small city of its own.

CB: What are some of the first things you want to do for Ft. Myers when you get into office?

KA: Well obviously public safety is a big issue. I want to mmake sure we continue on a path toward excellence. I also want to work on keeping our taxes low, improving our neighborhoods and attracting economic development to help keep the city growing forward. And we need to continue to work on our relationship with the community.

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Cary Barbor is the local host of All Things Considered and a reporter for WGCU. She was a producer for Martha Stewart Radio on Sirius XM, where she hosted a live interview show with authors of new books called Books and Authors. She was a producer for The Leonard Lopate Show, a live, daily show that covered arts, culture, politics, and food on New York City’s public radio station WNYC. She also worked as a producer on Studio 360, a weekly culture magazine; and The Sunday Long Read, a show that features in-depth conversations with journalists and other writers. She has filed stories for The Pulse and Here & Now. In addition to radio, she has a career writing for magazines, including Salon, Teen Vogue, New York, Health, and More. She has published short stories and personal essays and is always working on a novel. She was a Knight Journalism Fellow, where she studied health reporting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and followed epidemiologists around Kenya and Alaska. She has a B.A. in English from Lafayette College and an M.A. in Literature from the University of Massachusetts.