The special election for the District 17 Mississippi Senate seat is headed to a Nov. 25 runoff.
Charles “Chuck” Younger and Bobby Patrick advanced in a four-candidate race that will ultimately decide who replaces the late Terry Brown for next year’s legislative term. Neither garnered 50 percent plus one of the vote, however, necessitating the runoff.
Unofficial results with absentee votes show Younger finished with 5,038 votes, or 41.7 percent, in the 19 precincts voting in the race. Patrick finished second with 3,120 votes, or 25.85 percent.
Three of the county’s 22 precincts are in District 16, so they did not participate in the special election for the District 17 seat.
The runoff winner will fill Brown’s term, which expires in 2015. Brown died in September after a battle with cancer.
Younger, 51, has farmed and ranched in Lowndes and Monroe counties for more than 30 years. Patrick, 68, retired in 2011 after nearly 40 years as an insurance agent.
The other two candidates vying for Brown’s seat were Bill “Doc” Canon and Bill Gavin. Canon finished with 2,417 votes, or 20 percent, while Gavin garnered 1,465 votes for 12.1 percent.
Of 38,961 registered voters in Lowndes County, 14,711 cast ballots in the county’s 22 precincts for Tuesday’s general election, which is 37.76 percent. There are 122 affidavit votes left to be recorded today.
Younger said he was looking forward to hitting the campaign trail once more.
“I’ll just be going and meeting and greeting more people and beating the bushes some more,” Younger said. “They were all good candidates. I’m going to get in touch with them and tell them they ran a great, clean race and try to get some support of the people who voted for Bill and Doc.”
Patrick said he was pleased to advance to the runoff and felt confident about having a second chance to earn enough votes to represent District 17.
“I feel really upbeat about it,” Patrick said. “I would rather have had Chuck’s votes, but I congratulate him on working as hard as he did. I believe I will prevail in the long run, and I think I’ll do better in the runoff than I did today.”
The only two candidates to appear at the Lowndes County Courthouse Tuesday to follow results were Younger and Gavin, the latter of whom campaigned on his government knowledge through six years as city councilman. After looking at vote totals with a third of the precincts reported, he left.
“Anytime you enter a race or anything like that, losing is a possibility,” Gavin said. “The voters have spoken and I wish the winner the best of luck. They’ve got my total support and if they need help, all they’ve got to do is let me know. I won’t say it’s not disappointing because it is, but life goes on.”
Canon was replaced by Brown in 2003 after nearly 30 years in the state legislature, nearly all of it in the senate seat for District 17. Canon said he appreciated the opportunity to be on the ballot one more time.
“At this point, I’ve saved a lot of money by not getting elected,” Canon said. “I had been out of this thing for nine years and I knew I didn’t have much of a shot at it, but I’m happy if I win and happy if I lose. I enjoyed the campaign and have no regrets about getting in it. I had some money left over in my campaign fund and spent all of it. I’m satisfied with what I’ve done.”
Election day went smooth, clerk says
Lowndes County Circuit Clerk Haley Salazar said Tuesday’s election, which was the first general election in Mississippi to require voters to show identification, ran smoothly with only a few minor issues that were easy to fix.
“We had our normal things in the beginning of the day with the machines coming up, maybe the paper wasn’t loaded correctly, but it was things we could correct over the telephone with the poll workers,” Salazar said. “Voter ID is going smoothly. We had a few of those and we have a few that we’re waiting on to come in and show their ID. They have five days to do that. We have their phone numbers and we’ll be calling them trying to get them on in here.”
Salazar added that the special election likely helped draw a larger turnout than the county would have had otherwise.
“Generally for this election in years past, we have not had this number,” Salazar said. “I think having the (state) senate race on there brought out more voters this time. We would always hope to get at least 50 percent, but we very seldom touch that except maybe in the presidential election years.”
State senators are paid a $10,000 salary each year plus per diem.
Nathan Gregory covers city and county government for The Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 29 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.