Stuart Craig Lowe, better known as Craig Lowe, (born July 18, 1957) is an American politician and Mayor of Gainesville, Florida

Gainesville, Florida

Gainesville is the largest city in, and the county seat of, Alachua County, Florida, United States as well as the principal city of the Gainesville, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area . The preliminary 2010 Census population count for Gainesville is 124,354. Gainesville is home to the sixth...

. After winning a runoff election on April 13, 2010, by a margin of 42 votes (which held through an automatic recount) Lowe became Mayor-elect of Gainesville. He was sworn in on May 20, 2010, becoming the first openly

Coming out

Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....

 gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

 Mayor of the city.

He was first elected to the Gainesville City Commission to fill the newly-created District IV seat for a one-year term in April 2003 and served through his third consecutive term and second full (3-year) term until being sworn in as Mayor.

Mayor Lowe also serves as Chair of the Gainesville City Commission’s Equal Opportunity Committee, a member of the Regional Utilities, Community Development, and Countywide Visioning & Planning committees as well as the local Community Redevelopment Agency, the Gainesville/Alachua County Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization and the Alachua County Library Governing Board.

Personal life and education

Lowe was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 census, Atlanta's population is 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in...

. He received a B.S.A.

Bachelor of Science in Agriculture

The Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, usually abbreviated as either B.Sc. or B.S.A. or BScAg, is the first undergraduate degree awarded by university faculty of agriculture and agricultural colleges. The program is 4 years of study above Grade 12 High School graduation.The B.Sc. degree differs...

 degree in Soil Science

Soil science

Soil science is the study of soil as a natural resource on the surface of the earth including soil formation, classification and mapping; physical, chemical, biological, and fertility properties of soils; and these properties in relation to the use and management of soils.Sometimes terms which...

 from the University of Georgia

University of Georgia

The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...

. After moving to Gainesville in 1982 he received a master's degree in zoology

Zoology

Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...

 from the University of Florida

University of Florida

The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...

.

2003

2007

2010

Runoff Recount

A runoff election

Two-round system

The two-round system is a voting system used to elect a single winner where the voter casts a single vote for their chosen candidate...

 was held on April 13, 2010 with Lowe and Marsh as the candidates. The unofficial results indicated that Lowe had 6,098 votes (50.14%) and Marsh 6,063 votes (49.86%), excluding provisional ballots. Ultimately 17 provisional ballots were verified, yielding 12 more votes for Lowe and 5 more for Marsh. As the margin was less than 0.50% between the candidates, an automatic machine recount

Election recount

An election recount is essentially a repeat tabulation of votes that is used to determine the correctness of an initial count. Recounts will often take place in the event that the initial vote tally during an election is extremely close....

 took place on April 16, 2010. The recount verified the unofficial results, including verified provisional ballots, leaving the vote tallies unchanged. These are the official, certified results of the election.

External links

• Mayor Lowe's City of Gainesville Biography page