LA CONNER — The Town Council gave Jacques Brunisholz the vacant council seat with a 2-1 vote Tuesday evening.

Brunisholz, a Spanish teacher at La Conner High School, ran for the same seat last November but lost to Mike Murdock by nine votes in the general election. Murdock resigned from the council last month to take a teaching job in Utah.

Despite Brunisholz’s near victory in the election, Councilwoman Marilyn Johnson said Tuesday’s vote was not an easy one. Brunisholz is seen as “abrasive” by some, she said, and the decision to vote at all was controversial too.

She said Mayor Ramon Hayes asked the council not to vote because Councilwoman Kathy Hubbard was gone on vacation. But Johnson ignored that request Tuesday because, she said, delaying the vote could be seen as manipulating it. “To ask that it be postponed it just did not set well,” she said.

She and Councilman Dan O’Donnell voted yes to give Brunisholz the Position 1 council seat. Councilman Don Wright voted no.

The other applicants were Mike Carlisle, Stuart Welch and Dave Tracey. Carlisle, a semiretired stone mason, also ran for the seat in the last election but was defeated in the primary. Welch owns Rexville Grocery, and Tracey is the co-owner of Katy’s Inn in La Conner and is a lead designer for and part-owner of an engineering firm in Kirkland.

“We are less than a year away from filing for this and three other seats on the Town Council,” O’Donnell wrote by e-mail. “The four applicants were all sterling and should file next June.”

Johnson also said the other applicants for the position should run in the next election. After all, she said, she preferred two of the other applicants to Brunisholz.

“I had narrowed it between Mike Carlisle and David Tracey,” she said of her favorites, but “... then it becomes a beauty contest.”

She said Brunisholz is not her first choice to join the council but that the decision should ultimately be that of the voters.

“It was the people in this town who spoke,” she said.

Brunisholz, 56, has never served as an elected official.

Elliott Wilson can be reached at 360-416-2147 or at ewilson @skagitvalleyherald.com.