After Tuesday’s run-off election, St. Cloud has a complete City Council.

Incumbent Russell Holmes beat out former city councilman Jay Polachek with 65 percent, or 1,056 votes, to Polachek’s 35 percent, or 574 votes, for seat 3 on the at large dais.

“I’m just really grateful St. Cloud came out and voted again. It was nice to see a big margin. It was a good victory,” Holmes said from his low-key victory celebration at The Hideout in downtown St. Cloud. “I’m looking forward to working with the new council we got now. There’re a lot of things to do.”

Holmes spent nearly 12 hours campaigning outside the St. Cloud Civic Center Tuesday where Polachek and his supporters occasionally stopped by to also campaign.

“These elections are really hard. I really appreciate Jay and Pete,” Holmes said.

Holmes and Polachek went head-to-head Tuesday after the Nov. 6 general election failed to highlight a clear winner between the pair and a third opponent, Cecil “Pete” Jones.

In that race, Holmes took the most votes with 39 percent, or 5,211 votes. Polachek came in second with 34 percent or 4,520 votes, and Jones earned 27 percent, or 3,667 votes.

Tuesday’s election turnout was considerably smaller than the Nov. 6 turnout where 13,398 people voted in the St. Cloud City Council seat 3 race.

Tuesday’s election brought out just 1,630 voters out of 22,807 eligible, registered voters. That’s just 7.17 percent of registered voters.

Osceola County Supervisor of Elections Mary Jane Arrington expected a small turnout, which is often the outcome in a run-off election, but was disappointed to see a fewer ballots cast in this run-off election compared to the last run-off election held in St. Cloud.

The 2008 run-off election had an 8.4 percent turnout out of 17,570 registered voters.

“I was hoping to at least match the 8.4 (percent) or get to 10 (percent) because we’ve had so many absentee requests,” Arrington said.

Holmes, however, was pleased with the turnout, although he would have liked to see more voters at the polls.

“Just for a run-off with two people, it was nice to see a seven percent turnout. I wish it was more,” he said.