Macon City Councilwoman Elaine Lucas announced Tuesday afternoon that she is running for the District 3 seat on the consolidated Macon-Bibb County commission.

“This is going to be a new beginning in Bibb County,” said Lucas, 62, who first won election to the Ward 1, Post 3 council seat in 1983.

She spoke to about 30 supporters gathered in City Hall, surrounded by red, white and blue balloons, American flags, and “Elaine Lucas for Commission” T-shirts and yard signs.

Lucas said her campaign will be based on “putting the community first” and promised the “same hard, assertive work ethic” she’s shown in more than a quarter-century on council.

Her major issue will be to make sure officials’ promises on city-county consolidation are kept, she said. Lucas vehemently opposed the consolidation plan voters approved July 31 and since then has consistently criticized it as giving a “blank check” to the task force working on the new government structure.

She said she expected the same people who opposed her husband, Sen. David Lucas, D-Macon, in his quest for the District 26 Senate seat would also dump “big money” into the campaign against her.

“But I pledge to you we will not let that kind of negativity enter into our campaign,” Lucas said. “We will run a positive campaign.”

She held her 5-month-old grandson, Alexander, at the lectern, beneath TV camera lights, and said her run for commission is an effort to improve the community for him and others.

Lucas said she’ll work on improving recreation all over the community and looked back on her early efforts on council to replace the “little shack” of the Rosa Jackson Center with the current building.

She worked hard to make sure the Marriott hotel, attached to the convention center and Coliseum, was built, Lucas said. That was the first major development on the east side in years, she said.

The newly created District 3 covers part of the current county District 1 and much of the current city Ward 1. It covers east Macon, the eastern tip of Bibb County, then the county’s south end including Middle Georgia Regional Airport.

That puts Lucas in with two incumbents, fellow Ward 1 council member Lonnie Miley and District 1 Bibb County Commissioner Lonzy Edwards.

Miley already has said he won’t seek a new commission seat; doing so would require him to quit his job as an assistant coroner.

And Edwards, reached Tuesday afternoon, said he’s unlikely to run against Lucas.

“I’m weighing my options,” he said. “But I don’t anticipate that I’ll be a candidate for the commission.”

District 3 voters are about 79 percent Democratic and 19 percent Republican, according to a Telegraph analysis. The population is around 17,200, and 12,500 of those are voting age. Seventy-one percent of residents are black, and 26 percent are white.

Information from Telegraph archives was used in this report. To contact writer Jim Gaines call 744-4489.