FLAGLER BEACH, Fla. (March 19, 2024) – Sweeping Flagler County as expected, Donald Trump was the clear favorite for the 2024 Presidential Preference Primary on Tuesday, one of five states holding elections in the nation on the way to the likely general election rematch between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.
The other hotly contested race in Flagler County took place in Flagler Beach where Flagler Beach City Commissioner Eric Cooley hoped for another term to finish what he’d started since taking a seat on the commission six years ago.
Challenged by Bob Cunningham, Cooley accepted well-wishes from friends and supporters throughout the day as he spent the day in the chilly weather, shaking hands and talking with residents until the polls closed.
“It’s been very positive. The overall turnout is light. I think the Republican presidential primary has a lot to do with that just because it’s not so much of a primary so that’s probably suppressed a little bit of the excitement but all the thumbs up, I’m getting a lot of people stopping by,” said Cooley.
A work horse whether in his business or on the dais, he said he is most proud of the budget cycle and being part the fiscal guardrails for the city.
“Myself and some other commissioners are very conservative financially and I know that each budget cycle I kind of make a tally of the money that pushing back or changing decisions saves, and it’s just tens of millions. That’s like one of my own biggest accomplishments,” he said.
Cooley is also proud of working alongside fellow City Commissioner Rick Belhumeur to help convey the city’s quality of life standards to the new Veranda Bay project developer.
Overall, it’s a sense of a project list not quite finished for the incumbent Cooley, and he’s looking forward to finishing the tasks at hand.
“The best part is the satisfaction of being able to see everything through that I’ve been working on the last six years,” said Cooley.
“All these major projects that are going on, they’re all going to be finished within this next term. Having that sense of completion on everything that I’ve been working on for the last six years, that’s really the whole purpose of doing it,” he said.
“The one I’d like to see through is beach renourishment. That was literally year one when I very first got elected, that’s when we started meeting the county, and Army Corps and getting that going. That has been from not inception but from the very beginning all the way to now. That’s going to have probably the single largest impact on the entire city.”
Earning another term on the commission Tuesday evening, the numbers were close, but definitive with 820 votes for Cooley and 654 for Cunningham.
