McCown, Roades will face-off for District Attorney
McCown beats Allison for Republican nomination, while Roades defeats Maher for Democrats
By BARRY HALVORSON bhalvorson@journal-spectator.com

Election Day lasted longer than usual on Tuesday but when the dust settled, the November general election will pit incumbent Republican Josh McCown against Democratic challenger John Roades in the race for Wharton County District Attorney.

Both men posted wins in their respective party primaries.

In the Democratic Primary, Roades collected 2,557 votes, 59 percent, to challenger John Maher's 1,769, 41 percent.

In Republican voting, McCown garnered 1,912 votes, 55 percent, to challenger Dawn Allison's 45 percent.

The district attorney races were the only locally contested races in either primary.

Of the county's 24,239 registered voters, 8,695 ballots were cast in the election, a 17.94 percent turnout.

Of those, 5,078 were in the Democratic primary, 58 percent of the total, while 3,617 were cast in the Republican balloting in Wharton County.

In national voting, Hillary Clinton claimed a victory in the popular vote, at least in Wharton County, as she collected 2,692 votes, 54 percent.

Barack Obama finished second with 2,197 votes, 43.65 percent.

While no longer in contention, John Edwards still collected 81 votes, 1.6 percent, while Bill Richardson, Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd all received votes but were under 1 percent.

In the Republican presidential primary, John McCain finished with 54 percent of the vote, 1,914 to 32 percent for Mike Huckabee, 1,161.

Ron Paul received the support of 10 percent of the voters, 357, in the presidential race but dominated in his bid to retain his District 14 U.S. Representative seat.

He received 2,570 votes, 74 percent, to W. Chris Peden's 902, 26 percent. There were no Democratic filings for the U.S. Representative race, leaving Paul currently unopposed in November.

While totaling the election results ran late with final numbers not becoming available until around 11:30 p.m., Wharton County Elections Administrator Judy Owens said the election went well overall.

"There were some delays because of the caucuses," she said.

The party caucuses started about 15 minutes following the closing of the polls.

"Some of the election judges couldn't hear while they were balancing their forms and some of the judges stayed to participate in the caucusing."

She added that she was also impressed how the Republican Party judges handled dealing with both electronic voting as well as the use of paper ballots.