By Kaitlin Fleming
Staff Correspondent
Less than 11 percent of Etowah County voters turned out for the run-off elections on Tuesday, July 17.
Gadsden architect Craig Lipscomb won against former Ashville Mayor Robert McKay with 55 percent of the vote to claim the Republican nominations for the District 30 Alabama House seat.
“It was a tough race,” said Lipscomb. “McKay had more name recognition and more signs. In the end, we ran a clean race and didn’t result to mud-slinging and I think that voters really appreciated that.”
Lipscomb said he is going to recover for a couple weeks and then press forward to his race in the general election. Lipscomb heads off against Democrat Jared Vaughn in the general election on November 6.
“I’m confident in our ability to win,” said Lipscomb. “My opponent is a nice man and I know we will run another clean race, in a gentlemen like fashion.”
Rainbow City Councilman Tim Ramsey won the Etowah Commission District 4 runoff, claiming more than 58 percent of the vote to defeat incumbent Jeff Overstreet.
“I’m very overwhelmed by the support I received yesterday,” said Ramsey. “I am thankful for my family and voters. I am excited to start working and I am very optimistic. We worked a lot of long hours. It was not an easy race.”
Overall, voter turn out was very low. Of Etowah County’s 70,470 registered voters, only 7,677 turned out to vote and just over 100 absentee ballots were cast.
Provisional ballots are still to be counted.
At the Carver Community Center voting box, not a single ballot was cast.
Etowah County Circuit Clerk Cassandra Johnson said low voter turn out is common for mid-summer runoff elections.
Many state election results are waiting to be confirmed, but so far the candidates facing off in the November 6 th general elections are: Kay Ivey v. Walt Maddox for governor; Will Boyd v. Will Ainsworth for lieutenant governor; Jospeh Siegelman v. Steve Marshall for attorney general; Heather Milam v. John Merrill for secretary of state and Miranda Jospeh v. Jim Zeigler for state auditor.
The following individuals won seats on July 17: John Millican won state treasurer, Rick Pate won commissioner of agriculture and industries and Tom Parker won Alabama supreme court chief justice.
These results are unofficial and will be confirmed at a later date. At the time of reporting, 98 percent of precincts had reported in. When official results are announced, they will appear on the Alabama Secretary of State website at sos.alabama.gov/alabama-votes/voter/election-information/2018.