Kerry Smith has won the Republican primary for the District 2 commissioner seat in Santa Rosa County. Without a Democratic challenger, the seat is set to be his in November.
The win comes off the back of a tight race between Smith and Jeff Ates IV in Tuesday's election, leading to Saturday's machine recount.
The machine recount was required because there was less than half of a percent separating Smith and Ates after votes were tallied Tuesday.
The recount started at 8 a.m. Saturday at the Santa Rosa County Supervisor of Elections Office in Milton.
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All said, Smith beat Ates by about 60 votes with 7,945 and 7,884 respectively according, to the second unofficial results from the county's Supervisor of Elections Office. They both shared about 29% of the vote, separated by .22%.
The other two candidates in the race were Rickie Cotton, with 7,337 votes, or 26.54%, and Howard Steele with 4,481 votes, 16.21%.
After the machine recount, Smith and Ates were still separated by less than .25%, leading to a manual recount, which saw Ates, Smith and Cotton pick up votes. But none of the men's totals changed by more than four votes, leaving Smith with the victory.
Following the news that Smith had won, he told the News Journal he was "happy to get the nod" and is "ready to get to work."
The District 2 seat has been filled by current chairman Bob Cole for nearly two decades. He was first elected to the seat in 2002. He did not run in this cycle.
Ates brought in more money than the rest of the competition during this campaign. According to the supervisor of elections website he recorded over $77,000 in contributions compared to the roughly $39,000 raised by Cotton and the approximately $28,000 and $25,000 donated to Smith and Steele, respectively.
Heading into Tuesday's race, all four Republicans listed infrastructure as a core priority.
Smith is a Realtor in the area and has made building roads before developments his main campaign piece in the 2022 race.
Ates is a sixth-generation Santa Rosa resident, having worked in sectors like retail, construction and public tax accounting.
As Cole, an automotive technician and owner of Bob Cole's Automotive, exits, he leaves behind several large-scale projects he previously told the News Journal he helped to accomplish, including the new county courthouse on Avalon Boulevard, the June Ates Arena and the widening of State Road 87.