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Bill Sharp
In the two local races in Tuesday’s party primaries – both in the Republican primary – District 3 Putnam County Commissioner Bill Sharp will become the new chairman of the Putnam County Board of Commissioners, and newcomer McKenzie Cardwell won the GOP nomination to challenge incumbent Democrat Simone Jones in November’s general election for the District 2 seat on the board of education.
Sharp won election outright by, one, avoiding a run-off in his three-way race by taking over 60 percent of the vote, and, two, by default, since there is no Democratic opposition for the post in November.
Sharp took 2,598 votes, while former commission chairman Steve Hersey pulled 1,008 and former Messenger editor Lee Coleman, 660. Coleman had announced cessation of his campaign a couple of weeks ago. However, his name was still on the ballot but did not pull enough votes to play the role of spoiler and force a runoff race next month.
In the board of education race, Cardwell drew 271 votes versus Lu Feldman’s 97.
In larger trends – at least among Putnam voters:
• Republicans continued, if not improved, their two-decade dominance of local political offices. While local Democrats will have names on the November general election, there were none in contested races locally to help draw interest to the Democratic ballot. Republicans here easily drew 75 percent of the voters.
• While Putnam’s number of registered voters (16,007) is surprisingly large for a county of 22,000, the number who voted under three different voting methods is surprisingly small, 5,063, or 31.63 percent.
• Name recognition, whether through the ability to fund television ads, or through area political ties, or through incumbency, seemed to help several candidates among the throng running for some of the state and federal offices. These included Burt Jones of nearby Butts County; Floyd Griffin of Milledgeville; and Jody Hice, the 10th District congressman running for secretary of state.
• The national hubbub over Donald Trump’s endorsements proved a mixed bag here in Putnam. Hice defeated incumbent secretary of state Brad Raffensperger here, and Herschel Walker swamped all GOP opposition for the party’s nomination to take on Democratic U.S. senator Rafael Warnock in November. However, former U.S. senator David Perdue practically dropped out of sight in his bid to unseat Gov. Brian Kemp. And, statewide, Raffensperger defeated all three opponents with 51.95 percent of the vote, including Hice. Endorsed by former president Donald Trump, the congressman only garnered 33.75 percent of the vote statewide as of press time.