Two incumbents will keep their seats on the Oak Point City Council while one incumbent faces a newcomer in a runoff election.

A total 385 voters made their choices for three council seats from six candidates in the election in this small lakeside town. Duane Olson was the only candidate for mayor and will be sworn in May 16.

Judith Camp, 64, came in first with 239 votes. She said that she appreciates the support of a special-purpose committee that came out in her favor late in the election period, but that she believes she won on her own.

“I’ve always run on my own,” Camp said. “I don’t really think the committee affected the race. Hopefully, it was because I represented the people who elected me. I tried to serve the community the way I needed to. My commitment is to not let them have wasted their vote.”

Incumbent Jim Almond took 195 votes to secure his seat on the council. Almond supported a controversial council resolution in June that declared English as the official language of the town.

Almond could not be reached for comment Saturday night but has said he believes the committee, Visionary Citizens of Oak Point, was hiding behind that issue when members really were representing the interests of developers who wanted to change Oak Point’s one-house-per-acre density requirement.

The third seat on the council is up for grabs. Incumbent Leslie Maynard and council hopeful Colleen Cameron tied with 188 votes each. The council will decide on a date for a runoff election at its May 19 meeting.

Cameron said the tie is bittersweet and she would like to have won a clear victory.

“I would like to stress that we haven’t seen a voter turnout like this in years,” she said. “The voters are not completely happy with the job Ms. Maynard has done. Any time you see a runoff that involves an incumbent, that to me is an indicator that there is a groundswell of voters demanding stronger leadership. And given the current state of affairs of our city, there’s no question that stronger leadership is needed.”

Maynard, 64, could not be reached for comment Saturday night.

Stephen Shade, 41, fell just three votes short of the runoff with 185 votes, and Curtis Lacey, 47, garnered 107 votes in the election.

The election was complicated by the recent resignations of the administrative services coordinator and the city manager. Jennifer Ashenhart-Hawkins, 27, resigned April 18 and was arrested by Oak Point police April 27 on a misdemeanor charge of abuse of official capacity in connection with missing money from petty cash and unauthorized charges on a credit card. She allegedly told police she had been covering up for City Manager Richard Martin.

Martin also resigned but has not been charged with any crime in the ongoing investigation.

DONNA FIELDER can be reached at 940-566-6885. Her e-mail address is dfielder@dentonrc.com .