ShawneeDispatch.com

Cindy Neighbor is breathing a sigh of relief after winning re-election Tuesday to the 18th District State House seat covering northeast Shawnee and Lake Quivira with 52.3 percent of the vote.

Tuesday’s election was the first in six years where her opponent had been someone other than Shawnee Republican Mary Pilcher Cook, who was elected 10th District State Senate seat Tuesday.

Neighbor and Cook had faced off for the 18th District seat in the 2002 and 2004 Republican primaries and in the general election in 2006, after Neighbor became a Democrat. This time, facing Republican political newcomer John Rubin of Shawnee, Neighbor said it was still a busy campaign season.

“We did approximately eight mailings, phone calls, a lot of walking door to door, follow-up calls — we worked extremely hard,” Neighbor said. “And when you’re working against someone who doesn’t have a record, it’s easy (for them) to say ‘Well, I’ll do this and this,’ but until you get in there, you don’t know what a person will do.”

Neighbor gained 6,130 of the ballots cast to Rubin’s 5,592. Neighbor congratulated Rubin on keeping the campaign clean.

“I think both of us tried to be as positive as we could and keep it out of the negative light, and I think the voters appreciated that, because I heard that from many of them,” Neighbor said.

She said she also appreciated all the feedback she received from constituents while campaigning. Looking across the slate of elected legislators, Neighbor said it will be important for legislators to work across party lines in the upcoming sessions.

“I think it’s going to be important, with our economic concerns that we have, we’re going to have to come together and look at what we can do to get back to the economic strength that we once had,” she said.

Neighbor said the legislature would have to be careful in funding for education and Medicaid and look at combining offices and agencies for cost savings.

“I think we’re going to have to take a hard look and work together collectively as a body, and see if we can get rid of the division of Republican and Democrat to be an effective legislature,” she said. “We need to be mindful of the people, and not just get focused on one item, and look seriously at what we need to do.”