photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Mike Courtney, left, and Kristine Polian, right, are pictured on election night, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025.

In a Lawrence City Commission race that featured two former mayors, two new faces came away with the victory on Tuesday night — Mike Courtney and Kristine Polian.

Courtney and Polian, neither of whom has served on the City Commission before, each won a four-year term as the top vote-getters in Tuesday’s election. They beat out incumbent Bart Littlejohn, who was elected in 2021, and Bob Schumm, who had been on the commission in three stints from 1979 to 1981, 1987 to 1993 and 2011 to 2015.

With 100% of precincts reporting on Tuesday night, Courtney had 8,211 votes, or 29.65%, and Polian was second with 7,833, or 28.29%. Schumm had 6,448, and Littlejohn had 5,015.

Polian said the results spoke to the community’s desire for a new direction at City Hall.

“The message is loud and clear that this community is ready for a change,” she said.

And Courtney said much the same in a prepared statement he shared with the Journal-World.

“Tonight, the people of Lawrence have spoken in a clear and decisive voice that they want leaders who will focus on making this city more affordable for all of its citizens,” Courtney wrote. He added that fiscal responsibility in the city’s budget process and adding housing for first-time homeowners would be among his priorities.

Courtney has spent more than two decades working in the tech industry, both with startups and with firms like Nvidia, Dell and IBM. Throughout his campaign, he’s spoken about his goals of growing the city’s housing stock and changing how the city approaches economic development.

Once he takes office, the first thing Courtney wants to do is “focus on the rec centers,” he told the Journal-World. He’s said before that he wants to postpone the city’s new user fees at its four rec centers, and on Tuesday night he said that one of his priorities would be to “come up with a funding source so that those fees don’t have to go into place.”

He’s also proposed a plan to add 100 modular homes within the city limits — on Tuesday, he said he was working with the city on that idea.

“It’s at a good place, but we’re still working out the details,” he told the Journal-World.

In his statement, Courtney said he was excited to get to work.

“The best days of Lawrence are ahead of us; we can build the city’s future, together,” he wrote.

Polian, when asked about the first thing she wanted to tackle on the commission, said: “Finances.”

She previously was the chief financial officer for the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority and has spent more than two decades working in finance and city management in cities across the country, including in Kansas, Texas and California.

During her campaign, Polian said she wanted the city to cover its core services like streets, utilities and public safety first before it looks at other kinds of amenities, and she reiterated that to the Journal-World on Tuesday night.

“I contend that we cannot provide the services our community needs unless we are fiscally solvent,” she told the Journal-World.

She mentioned one bump in the city’s tax base that will be coming soon — the new Costco store that’s planned near Rock Chalk Park — and said she wanted “to be very focused on how we spend those increases.” And when it comes to Lawrence’s affordability, she said the city’s utility rates played a big role in that.

“When we talk about affordable housing, we have to talk about utilities,” she said.

Polian also expressed her “immense respect” for all the other candidates in the race, including Courtney.

“I really want to thank this community for trusting myself and Mike to lead this community into the future,” she said.

Tuesday’s results cap off a City Commission election year that originally featured 13 candidates and required an August primary to trim that number down to four.

The other seat up for grabs besides Littlejohn’s seat was that of Commissioner Lisa Larsen, another former Lawrence mayor. Larsen was first named to the commission to fill a vacancy in 2015, and successfully ran to keep her seat in 2017 and 2021. She did not seek reelection this year.