Tomball attorney Preston Dodson was sworn in Aug. 14 as the newest councilman for the City of Tomball after he narrowly defeated challenger Judy Wilson in the city’s Aug. 7 special election for Position 5.

Dodson earned 373 votes, or 53 percent of the tally, to Wilson’s 328, or 47 percent. He takes over for former councilman Warren Driver, who resigned from the council in June after he moved out of the city.

After serving on the city’s Planning and Zoning Committee for the past two years, as well as the city’s Advisory Council for the recently-approved Strategic Plan, Dodson will enter into his first foray in public office.

“I wish it had been a wider margin, but we’re very happy that we won,” Dodson said.

The new councilman spent Election Day at City Hall visiting with voters and making last-minute phone calls to local residents. While Dodson said “very few” told him what they were looking for in a representative, he said he believed they want “somebody who is going to be straight with them. They want somebody who is going to stay above the fray.”

Dodson reiterated his goal of bringing more business to the city and to look into how the city works with potential businesses and retailers.

“I want to work towards increasing the growth in this town,” he said. “I want to work toward finding out why business is going around us, find out if we’re too restrictive, why we are not helpful enough, if that is the case.”

As for Wilson, she suffers her second political defeat in four months after she lost a May vote to Gretchen Fagan for the city’s mayoral position. However, Wilson did manage to close the gap in the margin of victory between she and her competitor.

In May, Wilson earned 42 percent of the vote, a figure that increased 5 percent in August.

In this month’s election, of the 5,467 registered voters in the city, 12.93 percent went to the polls, down from 19.15 percent in May.

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