Jody Everhart’s political career started off a little rocky. He actually lost the election for the mayor of Spencer a couple of times, but those losses did not stop him from running again.

“I wanted to serve the people, the citizens of Spencer. I felt like I gave the citizens of Spencer a choice on who to elect, who to serve them. Even losing, I had about half the votes and I couldn’t let down our citizens,” he said.

With everything he did, Everhart said he had the citizens’ best interest at heart.

Everhart has been the mayor of Spencer for six terms. Before that he was on the Board of Aldermen and mayor pro-tem for the town.

This election cycle, Everhart decided to trade in his mayor hat for a grandfather one.

Humble beginnings

It all started with a playground. As president of the Spencer Jaycees, a leadership organization for young adults, Everhart went in front of the town board and recreation committee to discuss donating playground equipment to the town park.

The committee and board approved it, so Everhart called a company and got the equipment ordered. But one of the board members called the company and canceled the order.

“I didn’t really agree with what they did. I took it back before the committee and reordered it and we put it in the parks,” he said.

Everhart did not like the way the situation was handled. So he decided to try and change things from the inside. He won a spot on the Board of Aldermen and became mayor pro tem for the next five terms.

The first time Everhart ran for mayor, he lost by five votes. Then he lost by 11.

Two years after that he decided to run for mayor again. This time he tied with the other candidate. They decided to draw a name out of a hat to decide the election. Everhart’s name was drawn first.

The loser of the hat draw called for a recount, which added up to a tie again. Again, names were drawn from a hat but this time the other candidate won.

After appealing to the local board of elections and then the state board of elections, Everhart was given two choices: try his luck with the hat draw again or have a whole new election. Everhart chose the election.

That time, he won by about 200-300 votes.

“I think if you go back and look, that was the most people that came out because of the publicity of it and so they came out. And they really saw that one vote would count,” he said.

From there, Everhart has gone on to win many other elections, many unopposed.

“It’s a rewarding position to yourself and to the town to see the progress you’ve made over the last 28 years,” he said.

And Spencer has definitely changed over the years. Everhart said when he was first elected to the board, there were wooden poles and bulky power lines running down Main Street. Those were done away with after the streetscape project.

Through the years, Everhart has seen an increase in the number of Spencer’s police officers and a new fire station. He has also been involved with the Small Town Main Street project, which works to revitalize the downtown area, the developments with the Stanback Forest and many other projects.

A mayor with backbone

Everhart had to learn what it meant to be mayor of Spencer along the way.

He had to learn about the process of government, how to spend money and how to deal with Spencer’s council-manager type of government.

“As the town manager runs the day to day operation, then the mayor is only a representative of the board and the spokesperson,” he said.

Because Spencer has six aldermen, it’s up to the mayor to determine the outcome in the event of a tie, which happened during his first three meetings as mayor.

One of the aldermen on the board was a former mayor of Spencer who Everhart actually served under as an alderman. There were a couple of times when two of the board members would vote the way the former mayor did, while the other three would vote the way Everhart would have voted.

So Everhart decided to have a talk with the former mayor. He went over to his house and they spoke for a while.

“And I got ready to walk out of his door and he says, ‘You couldn’t even get your family to vote for you,’” Everhart recalled.

Everhart said he responded by saying his family could have voted for whoever they wanted, but he was the mayor. He told the former mayor that he could continue to vote in whatever way he chose, but when Everhart had to break a tie, things were going the way Everhart thought was best.

“From that point on, he voted the way I would have voted, and I think he was just giving me a test to say, ‘Hey, how big of a backbone does this fellow have?’” Everhart said.

Everhart learned to work with all of the government employees by giving them respect as well as space to do their job.

“We don’t need a full-time mayor. We don’t need somebody to come in here and try to tell somebody with a special training that we don’t have any training for how to do their own job,” he said.

Everhart did not learn all the tricks of the trade on his own. He often talked with other mayors and even house representatives and the senator to seek advice and counsel.

“If you had any questions, they could kind of guide you through them. See what they’ve been through, if they they’ve been through anything like that,” he said.

Even with difficult board members and other impediments, Everhart was able to lead the town in a forward direction.

But being mayor takes its toll.

Not making the same mistake twice

Between being on-call at Norfolk Southern Railway and going out of town for meetings as mayor, Everhart did not get to spend as much time at home as he would have liked. He missed a lot of his children’s childhood, so he does not want the same thing to happen with his grandchildren.

“Now you see the grandkids are 8, 7, and 3 and they’re already growing. So I want to spend some time with them,” he said.

But getting back involved with the government of the town is not completely off the table for Everhart.

“I won’t say that I won’t ever run for the board again or serve the town, but for right now I need to sit a spell,” he said.

Everhart said through the good times and the more difficult times, it was a pleasure serving the town of Spencer.

“It’s been a roller coaster and it all hasn’t been good but I wouldn’t trade it in for nothing,” he said.

Contact reporter Amanda Raymond at 704-797-4222.