Alamance Republicans swept most partisan and even ostensibly non-partisan races across the county in Tuesday’s elections.
Perhaps the biggest win was the return of Stephen Ross to a seat in state house district #63, winning over Ricky Hurtado who had ousted him two years earlier.
And the margin was similarly slim. Ross won Tuesday with 13,895 votes in unofficial Election Night returns to Hurtado’s 13,237 votes, a margin of 658.
Two years ago, Hurtado bested Ross by about 477 votes – 20,584 votes to 20,107 votes.
Other races were not so close. Sheriff Terry S. Johnson won a sixth term winning by 58.88 percent to 41.12 percent (35,023 to 24,463) over first-time candidate Kelly T. White. It was the first time Johnson had had a Democratic opponent since 2010, when he defeated a former assistant, Ron Parrish, who subsequently went on to become Gibsonville’s police chief. Johnson won that 2010 race handily, beating Parrish by almost 10,000 votes, 25,268 (61.45 percent) to 15,850 (38.55 percent), based on Election Night results.
Republicans swept the board of county commissioners, returning both incumbents, Craig Turner and Steve Carter. Turner, appointed to the board in 2021, led the voting with 35,109 votes; Carter, who serves as vice chairman of the board, had 34,851 votes; the lone Democrat seeking a seat, Anthony Pierce, won 25,827 votes.
The slate recommended by the Alamance County Republican Party also swept the school board, winning all three available seats on the non-partisan board.
Leading the voting was former state representative and county commissioner Dan Ingle, with 33,714. Newcomers Charles Parker of Mebane, a Duke University researcher, and radio station owner Chuck Marsh, won the other two seats with 27,072 and 25,720 votes, respectively.
The lone Democrat, Seneca Rogers who was making his second run for school board, ran fourth with 23,062 votes.
Placing fifth was Avery Wagoner, a Republican who did not secure the endorsement of the local party; he had 16,589 votes.
A sixth candidate who had withdrawn from actively seeking the post, Leonard Harrison, received 7,804 votes.
In the state senate, Republican Amy Scott Galey won reelection convincingly in Alamance County over Democratic candidate Sean C. Ewing, a Mebane city councilman. Galey won 34,363 votes in Alamance County to Ewing’s 24,987, 57.9 percent to 42.10 percent.
But Galey’s margin widened with the Randolph County precincts included, with an overall win of 47,160 votes to 27,729, a margin of 62.97 percent to 37.03 percent.
State representative Dennis Riddell won reelection with 20,211 votes, 62.69 percent, to 12,030 votes (37.31 percent) for Democrat Ron Osborne.
Incumbent district attorney Sean Boone and Clerk of Court Meredith Tuck Edwards, both Republican, won reelection without opposition, with 43,414 and 43,602 votes, respectively.
Democratic chief district court judge Brad Allen also won reelection without opposition, with 40,625 votes.
In the nonpartisan election for two seats on the Alamance County Soil and Water Conservation district supervisor, candidates endorsed by their respective parties won the top two positions.
Richard (Ricky) Reid, who was endorsed by the Republican Party, won a seat with 23,052 votes; Democrat Donna Vanhook, endorsed by the Democratic Party, won the second seat with 20,113 votes.
Third place went to the second Republican-endorsed candidate, Willie Holiday, with 19,693 votes. Democrat Brandy Whitaker was fourth with 17,133 votes.
An unaffiliated candidate, David Morrow, was fifth with 10,627 votes; Republican Otha C. Hawkins, who did not receive his party’s endorsement, placed sixth with 5,041 votes.
