Columbus Council, Harris County Commission races decided in runoff. Catch up on results.
With all precincts reporting, the Chattahoochee Valley area got results in runoff elections for Muscogee and Harris counties Tuesday night.
Tuesday’s races were set to determine the winner of races for a seat on the Columbus Council and the Harris County Commission.
None of the candidates won a majority of votes during the May 21 election, so these runoffs decided the citywide District 10 representative on the 10-member, nonpartisan Columbus Council and the District 4 representative on the five-member Harris County Commission, which has all Republicans and no Democratic candidates.
Columbus Council runoff results
The Columbus Council runoff between Prestige Property Brokers owner Travis Chambers and Ankerpak president John Anker ended in a victory for Chambers Tuesday, according to results from Muscogee County’s elections officials.
They competed to succeed John House, who resigned in April 2023 to spend more time with his ailing wife. House represented District 10, one of the council’s two citywide seats, for four and a half years.
The ballot actually had two elections for the District 10 seat:
- Special election to determine who immediately will fill the seat for the remainder of this year.
- Regular election to determine who will fill the seat for the full four-year term, starting in January.
In the final results Tuesday night from Muscogee County elections director Nancy Boren, Chambers defeated Ankerpak 6,783-5,892 (53.51%-46.49%) in the special election and 6,691-5,891 (53.18%-46.82%) in the regular election.
Those results are the tally from all in-person early votes, mail-in absentee votes and 25 precincts, Boren reported at 9:13 p.m.
The turnout for this citywide race has been 10% of the 122,344 registered voters in Columbus, according to Boren’s report.
In the May 21 special election, Chambers received 7,578 votes (43.35%). Anker got 6,808 (38.95%) votes. Fort Moore budget analyst Rocky Marsh got 1,863 (10.66%) votes and Faith Ministries pastor Patrick Leonard got 1,231 (7.04%) votes.
In the May 21 regular election, Chambers received 7,700 votes (44.17%), Anker 6,741 (38.67%), Marsh 1,795 (10.3%) and Leonard 1,197 (6.87%).
As he celebrated his victory Tuesday night with supporters, Chambers told the Ledger-Enquirer, “It was a great race.”
“I’m excited to be the top runner, and I’m just looking forward to serving our community,” he said. “I’m ready to serve and help make Columbus continue to go from good to great.”
Chambers praised his campaign for encouraging residents to vote again and participate in this runoff after the May 21 election was inconclusive.
“We knocked on doors,” he said. “We didn’t lose our momentum.”
His main priority as he joins the council, Chambers said, will be “community collaboration and make sure I cultivate a relationship with the colleagues I’ll be working with . … I want to build a bridge where we can continue to move our city forward.”
After the final results came in, Anker told the Ledger-Enquirer, “It was close. I thought I could win.”
Anker was grateful for his campaign’s increased effort from the May 21 election to the runoff, when he received more votes than Chambers on election day, but Chambers received the majority of the early votes.
“We focused on trying to get our base to the polls,” Anker said. “We had some demographics we were shooting for. We started a mailing campaign. We ramped up activity in certain precincts. But for some reason, we didn’t win. … We tried to get the vote out. We pushed really hard. We did better than the primary, so we were successful, but I think Travis must have done a good job too.”
Anker said he hopes his supporters “don’t take this as a loss but continue as a community to try to shape the talk. The city government shouldn’t be running ransack over us. If all of Travis Chambers’ people in south Columbus feel like we could do better, let’s watch and see if we’re going to do better really.”
Tyson Begly has been serving as the citywide representative in the District 10 seat since the council appointed him after House resigned. The council has an unwritten rule that anyone appointed by the council shouldn’t run for election so they don’t have an unfair advantage as an incumbent when voters decide who will represent them.
Harris County Commission runoff results
Incumbent Harris County Commissioner Bobby Irions held a thin margin of 17 votes over Richie Grantham when all precincts reported Tuesday for the District 4 runoff.
In the final update of results Tuesday night, at 8:32 p.m., Irions defeated Grantham 440-423 (50.98%-49.02%), with 100% of the district’s five precincts reporting, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.
That was a comeback for Irions, who trailed Grantham in the first three updates of results Tuesday night.
The turnout for this race was 16% of the 5,272 registered voters in the district, according to the report from Harris County elections director Sherrail Jarrett.
The Harris County elections board is scheduled to meet at 5 p.m. Friday to certify the election results. Jarrett told the L-E she doesn’t think there will be a recount.
In the May 21 election, Irions received 342 votes (49.6%), Grantham 317 (46%) and James Kelly 30 (4.4%). Kelly subsequently endorsed Irions, WRBL reported.
This story was originally published June 18, 2024 at 7:43 PM.
