Last Updated on January 27, 2024, 8:57 AM | Published: January 27, 2024
MOORE, Okla — Two candidates for a vacant Moore City Council seat and two candidates making bids for mayor will appear on the February 13 ballot.
Longtime Moore Mayor Glenn Lewis has chosen not to run again after six terms, ending two decades of service to the Moore community and opening up the city to new leadership.
Two candidates are making bids to fill his stead; longtime Moore council member Mark Hamm, and Moore community member Jeff Arvin.
As a result of Hamm’s decision to run for mayor, his former Ward 2 council seat is up for grabs.
Former fireman Tommy J. Lawrence and Moore High School Business and Computer Science department director Rob Clark will challenge each other for the seat.
All other council members up for election this year ran unopposed. Notably, this included Kathy Griffith, who was appointed to the ward 1 seat left vacant by Danielle McKenzie last year.
Six-term, two-decade mayor bows out
Over his two decade career as the Mayor of Moore, Glenn Lewis has led the City into becoming a unique place in the south Metro.
After Mayor Lewis decided not to run for a 7th term — something he had suggested to Free Press back in 2021 — two notable candidates filed with the Cleveland County election board to appear on the ballot.
Mark Hamm
Mark Hamm has been on the Moore City council for 11 years, and served as an officer on the board of directors for the Association of Central Oklahoma Governments (ACOG). He is also employed as a campus police officer at Oklahoma City Community College.
Hamm says that he will focus on three pillars as Mayor: Infrastructure, Public Safety, and Quality of Life.
Hamm would like the city to build a new water tower to maintain usable water pressures, and invest in the maintenance of aging street infrastructure to keep traffic flowing throughout Moore.
The City needs its own training facility for police and firefighters, and should continue to add amenities to city parks, Hamm argued in a campaign video released in late 2023.
Jeff Arvin
Jeff Arvin is a banker and active community member in Moore, serving as chairman of the City of Moore Parks and Rec Board for 20 years, a member of the Moore Chamber of Commerce, and the Moore Rotary club.
Moore has “had a leadership vacuum for a while,” said Arvin at a campaign event, and this is one of the reasons why he decided to run for Mayor.
His campaign slogan is “Faith, Family, Service,” and plans to tackle four big issues in office.
Arvin plans to support law enforcement to keep streets safe and build “Strong Families” within Moore with infrastructure improvements.
He opposes regulations that will hurt small businesses and hopes to uphold Moore values by “[focusing] on the basics of government, Not an extreme ideological agenda.”
Moore Ward 2 council vacancy
Hamm’s run for mayor leaves his former ward 2 council position open, and two candidates filed to be on the February 13 ballot.
Both explained why they wanted to run for the council seat in a candidate Q & A hosted by the Men for Moore at the beginning of 2024.
Tommy Lawrence
Retired firefighter Tommy Lawrence was encouraged to run for the vacant council member seat because of his safety concerns surrounding the Buck Thomas park.
“I’ve had a lot of training with evacuations and stuff like that…,” said Lawrence. “They had all of the gates out there locked… It starts being a problem when you have that many people in the facility.“
Along with that, Lawrence ended up finding an interest in serving Moore in government when he researched how the city goes about funding roads and infrastructure.
His background as a home builder often put him in contact with the city council, too.
Rob Clark
Rob Clark works with the Moore public schools as a department director and has mainly served Moore through the school system.
He and his wife run a “Moore for Christmas” effort at the Moore High School, providing meals and gifts for students and their families across the district.
He’s also been on the Moore urban renewal authority for three years.
Clark says that his main reason for running for the council seat is to “serve [his] community.”
Election information
The Cleveland County election board primary will be held on February 24, from 7 AM to 7 PM.
Your polling place and voter information can be found OK Voter Portal.
Damian Powell is our government reporter for the smaller municipalities in the OKC metro such as Moore, Norman, Bethany, and Warr Acres. Damian is studying Political Science at the University of Oklahoma.
