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Election 2021: Mims declares victory over Bowers in Dayton mayoral race

DAYTON — Jeffery Mims has declared victory over Rennes Bowers in the race to become Dayton’s next mayor.

>>Election 2021: Follow the results across the region HERE

Mims took 67 percent of the vote to Rennes Bowers’ 33 percent, with 100 percent of the precincts reporting at 10:30 p.m., according unofficial Montgomery County Board of Election results.

>>RELATED: Election 2021: The Race For Dayton Mayor

Mims will replace the outgoing Nan Whaley who occupied the office since 2013. Whaley is running for the Democratic nomination for Ohio governor in the 2022 election, with primary elections set for May 3.

Mims is a current well-known City Commissioner, former member of the Dayton School Board, former school administrator, former Dayton Education Association leader, teacher, and coach. During an edition of “WHIO Reports” last week, Mims described his primary responsibilities as mayor as safety, education, and recreation, calling the three “the keys to a foundational city.”

Mims said as a city commissioner, he has been pleased with the city’s efforts to enact police reform, in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and those reforms are starting to take shape.

Bowers is a retired firefighter from the Dayton Fire Department. On “WHIO Reports” last week, Bowers said his top priority is focusing more of the city’s safety and development efforts in troubled neighborhoods.

“These abandoned houses have got to be our top priority. They blight entire neighborhoods. They bring trafficking, drug addicts. They bring ultimately the coroner who brings dead bodies out of these homes,” Bowers said.

One of the controversies of the race is a mailer that went out to voters in Dayton, with a photo from the January 6 riot at the US Capitol Building in Washington. The campaign piece features a quote from Rennes Bowers that reads: “I was in DC on January 6.” Bowers told WHIO-TV that he did attend the rally in Washington on January 6th but did not go to the Capitol Building. While the mailer says it was sent from the Ohio Democratic Party, Bowers claimed it was actually paid for by Mims. In response, Mims denied that and said he saw it for the first time like everyone else in Dayton, when it arrived in the mail.

A statement from the Ohio Democratic Party reads: “The Ohio Democratic Party paid for this mailer as a way to make sure the voters of Dayton know that self-described conservative candidate Rennes Bowers was in Washington, D.C. on the day of the January 6th attack on our nation’s capital.”

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