George Grieb, the sixth-place finisher in last week’s Lawrence City Commission primary, dropped out of the race Tuesday.

Grieb said after analyzing the votes from the March 1 election that he and his campaign staff determined it wasn’t feasible for him to win one of the three seats up for grabs in the April 5 general election.

“Really, the numbers don’t lie,” said Grieb, who owns Lawrence-based Lynn Electric. “I’m a small businessman, and I operate my business by the bottom line. I operate by the numbers, and I looked at what the numbers had to say.”

Grieb finished with 2,288 votes in the primary, or about 1,200 votes behind the third-place finisher David Schauner. The primary election narrowed the field to six from nine candidates, and Grieb received the fewest number of votes among the six who advanced.

Grieb said his exit from the race didn’t mean he was giving up on the ideas that he espoused in the campaign, which included a heavy emphasis on creating more entry-level housing for Lawrence workers. He said that by getting out of the race he hoped to shift votes to other candidates who agreed with his stances but were in a better position to win one of the three seats.

“The other candidates who are in the race that best exemplify how I feel are in a better position to move my ideas and my agenda forward than I am, so that’s what I’m going to let them do,” Grieb said.

Grieb did not give a formal endorsement to any of the remaining candidates, but he said people likely could guess whom he supports.

“Anybody who knows anything about the election knows where my allegiances are,” Grieb said.

On the campaign trail, Grieb had often taken positions counter to the two candidates supported by the Progressive Lawrence Campaign, incumbent Schauner and Jim Carpenter.

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The remaining candidates in the race said they were uncertain whether Grieb’s departure would change the dynamics of the campaign.

“I’m not sure any candidate really controls the vote of the people who voted for them in the primary,” Schauner said.

Tom Bracciano, the fourth-place finisher who trailed Schauner by 61 votes after the primary election, said he hoped to receive a boost from Grieb’s exit.

“I think George and I did agree on a lot of issues, but I don’t know how much this will help me,” Bracciano said. “I’m sad though because I thought he would make a good commissioner.”

Making it even more difficult to predict how Grieb’s departure may affect the race is the fact that his name will remain on the ballot. State law does not allow candidates to remove their names from the ballot after the filing deadline has passed.

Grieb was one of the top money-raisers in the election. According to a Feb. 17 campaign finance report, the most recent available, Grieb had the largest war chest with $19,747. But $10,000 of the funds were a personal loan Grieb had made to the campaign.

Grieb said he intended to use leftover campaign funds to repay that personal loan, which is allowable under state law. Any money left after that, which Grieb said would be negligible, would be disposed of according to state law. The Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission said the law allowed Grieb to donate the extra money to charity, to a state or local political party, or refund it to contributors.

Grieb said he was not ruling out a run for political office in the future. He said this campaign had taught him the need to start campaigning well in advance of an election. Grieb did not decide to run for the commission until a few hours prior to the Jan. 25 filing deadline.

“That’s what really hurt us,” he said.