Well, I guess all this election excitement will last a little longer

Opinion

Discussion

March 5, 2010

By DAVID WILFONG CNHI The Zope Gazette Fri Mar 05, 2010, 03:18 PM CST

ROCKWALL COUNTY — And the winner is ... nobody yet!

Just kidding, but it looks like we will be having a bit more suspense when it comes to finding out who will be leading our county for the new year.

There were a few races decided on Tuesday night.

Ralph Hall won again without facing a runoff. He will now face VaLinda Hathcox in the general election. Rick Perry will move on to the general election to face Bill White.

Here locally, the commissioners got through the primary (and only) election, and Shelli Miller will be our next County Clerk.

But the big race here in the county is still undecided. It will be a face-off between Jerry Hogan and Kevin Fowler. I guess we’ve decided that there will be a new face leading the county government, it’s now just a matter of which new face it will be.

The same holds true for the Justice of the Peace races. Both incumbents — David Karr and Larry Holloway — have managed to keep their hats in the race, but face tough challenges by Nancy Beaty and Jack James.

It’s amazing how close these races were. There were less than 300 votes deciding the Precinct 1,4 position and less than 200 divided the leaders off the Precinct 2,3 spot.

Don’t ever let it be said that your vote does not count, they definitely will in the upcoming runofff.

This is about the right time to remind all that the runoff is important to participate in as well. The above three races are extremely close and the deciding factor would hinge on where the votes go from the previously eliminated candidates.

But it doesn’t always seem to happen that way.

I’ve seen runoff elections where the total vote count was less than what the top vote-getting candidate got in the original primary. There’s also more than sufficient precident for the second place finisher in the primary to come back and overtake the leader to win the nomination.

So, if your candidate had a good lead on Tuesday night, don’t take it for granted that they have the nomination. Get out there and vote in the runoff.

If your candidate came in second on Tuesday night, don’t take it for granted that it’s a lost cause. Get out there and vote in the runoff.

If your candidate has been eliminated, investigate the candidates that are left, then get out there and vote in the runoff.

Some of the interesting little facts that are often left out in voting reports are how well the voters themselves did in the election. This is also known as “Voter Turnout.”

For Republicans in Rockwall County that number was about 21.44 percent. Not wonderful, but not bad either.

The Rockwall Democrats tallied up 1.61 percent.

Ummm, Democrats? Hello? Are you out there?

No, I’m not stumping for the Democratic Party or anything like that, but I do think that a very important part of democracy is lost when there’s only one party running for anything. There’s only going to be one party running for anything as long as there’s only one party voting for anything.

I know there’s a lot of people out there that have said that it is now impossible for a Democrat to win anything in Rockwall County, but that’s certainly going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy if there’s nobody going to the polls for the Democrats and, subsequently, there’s nobody filing for any races on that side of the aisle.

I understand that there were not any local contested races to vote for, but that should not matter. Getting the Democratic Party back on track in Rockwall County is going to require laying some ground work, and part of that is getting enough people into the primaries so show enough support for someone to believe they might have a chance in the general election.

Why do I care? Because covering general elections in Rockwall County has becoming somewhat ... well ... “less-than-suspenseful.”

And I had heard following the great Obama-Clinton race that the donkey-riders here were going to get it going again.

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