Election Summary
| Well, another election is in the books with record
turn out no less. 10,157 Loudon County voters went to the polls to cast
their ballots. I was one of those who didn't think the turn out would be
that high. But as high as the turn out was, that was still just around
33% of the registered voters in the county. That means nearly 20,000
voters didn't bother to vote. Every candidate, whether they like the
results or not, must respect the will of the voters. It's the American
way. How bout the mayor's race? More than 10,000 voters and the difference between the top three candidates was just 294 votes. That's about as close as you can get. The stunner in that race had to be the second place finish of Mark Matlock. A total new comer to the political world, Matlock garnered 2,891 votes, 31.31%, of the vote. I had 2,824, 30.58%, and Estelle Herron finished on top with 3,118, 33.77%, of the vote. Another new comer, Glenn Hagerman came in a distant forth with 401 votes or 4.34% Herron carried nearly all the lower end precincts.
Loudon, Philadelphia and Davis she also carried Glendale and Greenback.
I carried the upper end, Lenoir City, Eatons Browder and Highland Park.
Matlock carried Tellico Village and Luttrell. Almost everyone, including the candidates, had predicted a very close race in the sheriff's election. But at the end of the day, the voters didn't see it so close. Sheriff Tim Guider was reelected by a margin. Guider received 5,888, 61.17%. Challenger Steve Cook took in 3,738 votes, 38.83%. Another race that was thought to be close turned out to be not so much. Three candidates were hoping to fill the general sessions judge seat. Lawyers, Rex Dale, Robert Hinton and Kim Waterhouse were in the race. Dale came out on top pretty handily with 4,282, 47.17% with Hinton getting 2,838, 31.26% and Waterhouse in third with 1,958, 21.57%. Incumbent Road commissioner, Sean Giles, Lost his bid for a second term. Giles had two challengers for his job. Gary Kinard and Eddie Simpson both were gunning for the road job. Simpson came out on top with 4,249, 45.94% to Giles' 3,283, 35.49%. New comer Kinard finished third with 1,718, 18.57% One of the closest races of the night was for Trustee. Six candidates were were in the mix for the office vacated by Estelle Herron. When all the dust settled, former County Mayor George Miller edged out Billy Pickel by 49 votes. Long time employee of retiring court clerk Riley Wampler, Darlene Russell easily bested the other three candidates to fill her boss' vacant seat. Brian Jenkins, running for county commission in the first district pulled off the biggest upset of the night. Jenkins ousted eight year incumbent Nancy Marcus for seat "A". Three challengers filed to oppose Marcus for her seat but it was Jenkins who carried the race. Jenkins had 737, 41.33%, Marcus 597, 33.48%, William Culvahouse 286, 16.04% and Kevin Walker had 163, 9.14%. Forty-four year incumbent Roy Bledsoe, fourth district commissioner narrowly dodged the bullet by defeating challenger Mike Newman by just 30 votes. Bledsoe took 398 votes to Newman's 368. The third candidate, Greg Hackney got 130 votes. Incumbents Circuit Court Clerk Lisa Niles and Register Of Deeds Tracy Littleton were both reelected to their offices by hefty margins. Now it's on to August for several of the winning candidates. Monday I'll have all the details of what races we'll be looking at in the August general election. Below are two links to the election results. The first is a precinct by precinct tally the second is just the over totals. It's interesting to look at the precinct totals. |
BACK
5/6/10