Evans wins reelection for Garden City mayor, two candidates elected to City Council
Longtime Garden City Mayor John Evans faced his first election challenge in 16 years from a developer intent on bringing more affordable housing to town. The voters of Garden City decided to keep him at the helm.
Evans finished the night with 57% of the total votes and a more than 400-vote lead against developer Hannah Ball, with only one precinct remaining. This will be his fifth term as mayor, but it was the first competitive race he’s had since 2005.
For the Garden City Council, Bill Jacobs and incumbent Teresa Jorgensen finished as the top vote-getters with 27% and 26% of the vote, respectively, winning seats on the council. They narrowly defeated John McCrostie and Greta Mohr; only 6 percentage points separated the four candidates.
The mayoral election pitted one developer, Evans, against another, Ball. She is a political newcomer who ran on a platform of new means of housing and increased transparency at City Hall.
The race saw an influx of money into Garden City politics. Evans raised more than $47,000 to keep his part-time job, although nearly half of that sum was a personal loan. The Ada County Republican Central Committee also sent out mailers in support of Evans, while sending others against Ball.
Evans denounced the mailers, one of which included the Garden City logo, a registered trademark of the city.
Garden City also had four candidates challenging one another for two spots on the four-member City Council.
McCrostie, a Democratic state representative and a teacher, and Mohr, a business owner, ran on a slate against incumbent Jorgensen, an account manager at Fisher’s Technology; and Jacobs, a former tech executive. Evans appointed Jorgensen to the council in September 2020.
This story was originally published November 2, 2021 at 8:00 PM.
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