CENTRE — “The worst thing you could call a Democrat in this election was a Democrat.”

So said one winning Republican candidate the day after his party took control of all but one county office in last Tuesday’s general election.

The GOP strategy of tying local Democratic candidates to President Barack Obama, who proved extremely unpopular statewide on Nov. 6 and won only 22 percent of the vote in Cherokee County, was largely successful.

“Save Our Freedom, Vote a Straight Republican Ticket” implored an ad recently placed in this publication by the local branch of the tea party.

By a large margin, Cherokee County voters did so. Overall, 2,314 voters cast straight GOP ballots, compared to only 1,098 who voted straight Democrat. Countywide turnout was 9,897 (69.5 percent) out of 14,237 registered voters. In 2010, about 51 percent of local voters cast ballots; in 2008, voter participation was 66 percent.

County Republican Party Chairman John Ellis said the successes his candidates enjoyed were reflective of the triumph of the straight-ticket strategy.

“I was very confident going in,” Ellis said. “Considering the hard work our local candidates put into the race I was not surprised at how it turned out.”

With one exception, local Republicans made a clean sweep of Election Day—in some cases overwhelmingly so.

Republican Mark Green was the top vote-getter of the night, nearly doubling incumbent Democrat Dewandee Neyman's 3,260 votes for Board of Education Place 4. Green got 6,315 (66 percent).

In the race for school superintendent, Mitchell Guice solidly defeated Brett Keasler with nearly 60 percent of the vote. Write-in candidate Ken Daugherty got 22 votes.

Kirk Day defeated Democrat Sid Garrett in the race for probate judge, 5,134 to 4,561.
Later in the week Day, who served as probate judge from 2004 to 2006, said he is ready to return to the County Administrative Building.

“I want to make Cherokee County a better place to live and a better place to work,” Day said. “I think we can do a lot to make the county an attractive destination not only for business and industry, but for tourism. That’s something I would like to focus on.”

Rookie GOP candidates Marcie Foster and Randy Jones defeated, respectively, Lanny Starr and incumbent Wade Sprouse for seats on the Cherokee County Commission. They will take office later this month.

Challenger Shaunathan Bell defeated 30-year-veteran David Rains (55 percent to 45 percent) for circuit judge in Dist. 9, which includes Cherokee and DeKalb counties.

The only local Democrat to win a contested race Tuesday night was Suzanne Bishop, who defeated Linda Archer for Place 3 on the Board of Education. Bishop’s win was narrow—only 111 votes out of over 9,300 cast in the race.

Circuit Clerk Dwayne Amos and Circuit Judge David Cole, both Democrats, won without opposition.

In statewide races, Roy Moore defeated Bob Vance to win another term as chief justice of the Supreme Court despite being removed from office in 2003. Twinkle Cavanaugh defeated Democrat Lucy Baxley and will take over leadership of the Public Service Commission. With Baxley’s loss, the GOP now controls every state-level elected office in Alabama. The party also has strong majorities in both houses of the state Legislature.

Alabama voters approved Amendment 1 on the Nov. 6 ballot, extending the Forever Wild land-buying program for another 20 years. The amendment received 1.3 million total votes – more than any of the other 10 amendments on the ballot.

“I knew it was popular, but the vote exceeded my expectation,” said former gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne, who helped campaign for the measure.

The only amendment to fail was Amendment 4, which would have removed language from the Alabama Constitution mandating poll taxes and separate black and white schools. Black legislators and the Alabama Education Association opposed the measure, arguing it should be defeated because it preserved a 1956 amendment that declared Alabama children did not have the right to a public education.

In the vote for president of the United States, Republican Mitt Romney received 78 percent of the vote in Cherokee County and 61 of the statewide vote. Nationally, Barack Obama was reelected to a second term with 51 percent of the vote.

Dist. 3 Congressman Mike Rogers, R-Saks, was reelected to a sixth term.