Denton Mayor Perry McNeill and rival Mark Burroughs are headed for a runoff after neither secured a majority of the vote in Saturday’s mayoral race.

DRC/Barron Ludlum

Mark Burroughs tells a supporter he’ll be in a runoff for the mayor’s seat. Supporters gathered at his home Saturday night.

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Two other candidates, businessman Justin Bell and college student Darac Favre, combined to receive about 12 percent of the 3,330 votes cast — preventing either McNeill or Burroughs from reaching 50 percent and extending a bruising campaign for an­other month.

The runoff election is June 14.

Burroughs, 50, a lawyer, claimed momentum after the tally. He received nearly 49 percent of the votes, compared with McNeill’s 39 percent, despite facing questions about whether his law firm’s contract with the city represented a conflict of interest.

“So the issue, as in all runoffs, is getting out the vote,” Burroughs said. “We’re going to spend the first couple of days recovering, and then we will map out a strategy and follow it through.”

McNeill, 72, a retired professor and engineer who is seeking a second term, said Saturday’s results surprised him. He is trying not to become the first mayor since 1990 to lose a re-election bid.

“I thought we might win outright, but that’s fine,” McNeill said. “We’ll just go forward.”

Bell and Favre expressed disappointment with the results.

“I’m kind of sad,” said Favre, 20, a first-time political candidate, who focused his campaign on growth and environmental concerns.

Both candidates said their lack of funding and name recognition probably hurt them.

“There’s no question that [high campaign expenditures] helps quite a lot,” said Bell, 30, who ran a back-to-basics campaign on essential city services. “Like in business. Without marketing, you’re not going to sell a thing. To some degree, politics is the same way. If you don’t have a marketing machine behind you, you’re behind the eight ball.”

The four-man race saw two veterans of city politics sparring with two relative newcomers in a campaign marked by lawsuits, conflict-of-interest allegations and policy clashes.

DRC/Barron Ludlum

Mayor Perry McNeill shares a laugh with his supporters who gathered at Fremaux’s Metropolitan Catering on Saturday night to await election results. McNeill, in his first term as mayor, will face Mark Burroughs in a runoff.

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McNeill, Burroughs and City Council candidate Pete Kamp survived efforts to strike their names from the ballot for alleged violations of the city’s term limits.

Burroughs, who served on the council with McNeill from 2001 to 2004, criticized the mayor’s leadership throughout the campaign. Burroughs tried to frame the race as a chance to refocus the city on long-term planning and other initiatives begun during his tenure on the council. But questions over term limits and a potential conflict of interest trailed him in recent weeks.

His law firm, Sawko & Bur­roughs, collects delinquent taxes for many local government entities, including the city of Denton, which his rivals called a conflict of interest. Burroughs has repeatedly said the contracts aren’t a conflict because his firm’s payments come from fees levied on taxpayers’ past-due amounts, not from government coffers.

Mailers funded by a group led by local activist Bob Clifton also raised questions about Bur­roughs’ tax-collection contracts and level spending on the race.

The most recent campaign finance reports showed Bur­roughs had spent more than $45,000 on his mayoral bid, compared with McNeill’s $16,600.

Burroughs said he believes voters are tired of “negative campaigning.”

“I’m focused on building, not on destruction, and I’m going to continue to do that,” he said.

McNeill expressed disappointment with the turnout, which represented about 6 percent of Denton’s 55,289 registered voters. He said he would continue to campaign on his record. “I think I have a good record, and I’m surprised we didn’t have more folks recognize that,” McNeill said. “So I’m just going to push that harder.”

Staff writers Donna Fielder and Amy Dodd Thompson contributed to this report.

LOWELL BROWN can be reached at 940-566-6882. His e-mail address is lmbrown@dentonrc.com .

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