ELECTION RESULTS: Smyth voters pick leaders

In Smyth’s uncontested races, Sheriff David Bradley returned to office with 99.15 percent of the vote, or 5,063 ballots cast. Commonwealth’s Attorney Roy Evans received 4,774 votes. Treasurer Thomas Burkett II was returned to office with 5,022 votes. Commissioner of Revenue Jeff Richardson received 5,011 votes.
Delegate Joe Johnson received 967 votes in the county. District wide he received 10,608.
State Sen. William Wampler Jr. received 4,056 Smyth votes. District wide he clinched about 63 percent of the vote. Sen. Phillip Puckett received 471 votes. District wide he received 28,425.
The three candidates for Soil and Water Conservation District, Archie Atwell, C.W. Pratt and John Waddle, each running unopposed, received 3,443, 3,352 and 3,314 votes, respectively.
Todd Dishner, running for the Park District Board of Supervisor seat, received 665 votes. Charlie Clark Jr., in the North Fork District, received 574 votes.
In the Rye Valley School Board District, Jesse Choate received 770 votes. In the Park District, Sam Hambrick received 612 votes. Jim Coulthard received 534 votes in the North Fork District. In the Atkins District, Laura Hall received 1,082 votes.

In Smyth’s contested races:
Jimmy Warren: 70 percent – 3,894 votes
Jimmy Warren (D) faced his first three-way race, and only the third contested election, in his four decades as Smyth County Clerk of Circuit Court and before the election, showed no signs of willingness to give up his job. At 75, his health is “seemingly good, and as long as my physical and mental capacities stay good, I’d like to stay on the job,” he said in the days before the election.
Warren’s term is longer than those of the other constitutional officers—eight years as compared to four.
“My motivation is I enjoy my work and I enjoy working with the people of the county,” he said. “I get a lot of personal satisfaction when I can help people, especially in matters of probate. That’s my motivation.”
In his tenure, Warren said, “We’ve done a lot. I don’t take credit for it personally, but I’ve had a hand in it.”
Warren said his office was the first in Southwest Virginia to automate case management in 1988 and financial management in 1989. The office is scanning records to create digital archives.
“I feel like my time there has prepared me for he job I’m doing,” Warren said. “We have had a model office for many years. We get compliments from many people on the condition of our records.”
That work will continue, according to Warren. “I keep a good eye on the future by keeping up with technology.”
Herb Clay: 13.5 percent – 749 votes

The clerkship presented challenges Republican Herb Clay said he was ready to step up to, challenges he wouldn’t realize if he challenged his boss, Commonwealth’s Attorney Roy Evans, and won.  There’s always a point in everybody’s career where you look back, assess where you’ve come, and ask yourself, Is there a challenge out there?” Clay said before the election. “I did that. The clerk job is very challenging. It presents a challenge to me. That’s why I’m seeking it.”
While never aiming criticism at Warren, Clay said he believed “it’s time for the clerk’s office to go in new directions. I can bring a different vision. Mr. Warren has been there 40 years. It needs a new vision, change. A lot of what the office does is set statutorially, but a lot can be changed.”
As an example, Clay said the office he considers the “backbone of the court system” needs to ensure its deputy clerks are trained on an ongoing basis, paid well and offered other incentives to keep them on staff.
“You want the best deputy clerks there as possible,” Clay said. “All new hires should have a minimum of a two-year college degree.” Employees’ education would not stop there, or with on the job training, but follow the Commonwealth Attorney’s office example of career clerks who receive continuing legal education – and salary increases commensurate with broadening knowledge.
“In any job, more education makes you more efficient,” Clay said. “The higher the educational background of your employees, the better.”
Clay said he would set up two divisions within the clerk’s office, criminal and civil, with a clerk in a supervisory position over each division. “If I’m not there, the employees can go to them for whatever problems arise,” Clay said. “A path of command is in place.”
Clay said he is in the best position to see how a clerk’s office can be run, with his years of private practice and his more recent years in the courthouse. “There’s always room for improvement, and I’m the best to make those improvements.”
Denton Staley: 16 percent – 890 votes

Independent Denton Staley ran for Clerk of the Circuit Court out of a sense of duty and on a platform pledging leadership in the face of adversity.
“My parents taught us that we have to participate in democracy for it to work,” Staley said. Now, he said, is the time for his participation because the coming courthouse renovation will be adversity, he suggests, on a scale no one is preparing for.
“It’s going to be a lot harder than people think,” he said of the millions of dollars of work that will enlarge the courthouse and ramp up its safety for complainants and defendants.
Staley said people remind him the clerk will not be involved in the renovation, but the clerk’s office will have to continue to perform at a high level. He sees the clerk as offering mediation during the adversity from which a renovated courthouse can come as “the centerpiece of the county moving on into the century. The last thing I want to see is remodeling at the courthouse and 20 years later you have to do it again.”

Bill Carrico: 2,428 in the county

Del. Bill Carrico (R-5th) said he is proud of and humbled by having “a lot of support from the General Assembly,” and counts first among accomplishment the recent ground breaking for a prison in Grayson County, bringing 350 jobs. The prison will also anchor a water project in that county for which the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission has provided a $2.5 million appropriation, he said.
Carrico is also proud of his methamphetamine legislation he said curbed production and use with harsher penalities, and for his supporting role in getting American Electric Power to rescind a rate hike.
“People were willing to sign petitions,” he said. “Without their help, I could do nothing.” He said he was just the spokesman for the coalition of elected officials that crossed party lines to achieve the rate reduction.
Carrico said in a new term he wanted to “bring jobs for all educational levels,” and continue focusing his four-point plan of developing infrastructure, new business and business expansions, and keeping taxes low on businesses.
Carrico said in a new term he would work to see that illegal aliens do not go to school at taxpayers’ expense, and would support deportation of illegal aliens committing crimes here, saving taxpayers the cost of their prosecution and detention.
Carrico looked forward to amending or repealing the abuser fee law imposing ongoing fines for Virginians violating the speed limit by 15 miles per hour.
The original legislation, he said, “applied to everyone. When it came down with the governor’s amendments, it applied only to Virginians. I agree with the people that it’s not fair.”
The former Virginia State Trooper said he saw a coming fight over Second Amendment protections for gun owners in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings in April. “I think we’re probably going to see a lot of legislation by antigun people to restrict gun rights. No matter what laws you pass, nothing would have stopped what happened that day.”
The Fifth District includes only part of Smyth County. Voters at polling places in Seven Mile Ford, Rich Valley, East Park, West Park, Atkins, Wassona, Royal Oak East, Royal Oak West, Adwolfe, Sugar Grove, voted in the district race.
Susie Garner:  1,929
Democrat Susie Dixon Garner said she believed her skills as an accountant suit her to represent the 5th District in Virginia’s House of Delegates.
“I’m an accountant, a CPA, and I understand budgeting, allocating resources,” she said Monday.
“I’m a persistent person,” she said. “I keep working, I’m methodical, logical. I understand tax issues from the government side and the taxpayers’ side. That’s a unique perspective I would have. I keep at something until it’s completed. I see them through. I’m not a quitter.”
Garner said managing the state’s budget shortfall is “just like doing your own family budget. If there’s not enough money, you cut expenses. You reallocate what you have. The rainy day fund has requirements for its use, but if we met those it would be OK to use it. I’m conservative, and I would try not to use much of the rainy day fund.”
First among funding priorities for the state in Garner’s view is education. “Education is very important and in the general fund it should be protected,” she said.
For Smyth County and the region, the most important issue is the economy, Garner said. “It’s the reason that I ran,” she said. “We need to be sure we’re using the resources we have, like the Governor’s Opportunity Fund and the Tobacco Commission.”
Garner said she would work with Congressman Rich Boucher “on improving our economy and infrastructure. To attract businesses, we have to have water, sewer, power and last-mile Internet… a boon to telecommuting.” The Virginia Department of Taxation, she said, links its Danville office to Richmond via telecommuting.

Harold Slemp: 505 votes or 41 percent

Optimism is a key reason Republican Harold Slemp said he sought a second term representing the Atkins District on the county board of supervisors. Another is follow-through: Slemp said he wanted to see projects begun in his first term to come to fruition in his second.
“We’ve managed to keep property tax one of the lowest in the area,” he said. “The school board has worked well with us and now has its budget in line. I supported Sheridan Ridge and the Exit 47 development we think will happen shortly. I was glad to see the governor announce the million-dollar grant for the Atkins sewer system at Exit 54.”
Slemp is also proud of the public transportation service he and fellow supervisor Marvin Perry supported, the county-funded expansion of District III Governmental Cooperative into rural areas to serve the elderly and disabled. He is also working to improve the county’s emergency services radio system.
Unemployment dropped from the “11 percent or better” when he took office to around 5 percent now, he said.
Slemp lauded the cooperation with Washington County in bringing Gates Corporation to the jointly owned industrial park at Glade Spring.
Looming largest in Slemp’s hopes for a second term was the completion of the sewer system at Exit 54. “There’s a lot of economic development depending on that,” he said. He also anticipated the start of development in the Sheridan Ridge project, which by paying for its own water, sewer and roads, represents no county expenditures but instead a surge in tax revenues for the county.
Brenda Waddell: 739 votes or 60 percent of the vote
Independent Brenda Waddell challenged incumbent Harold Slemp, a Republican, but party affiliations don’t mean a lot to Waddell.
“It’s not the party, it’s the person,” she said, “the person you think will do the best job. I’m an independent.”
The decision to run for the Atkins supervisor seat was not an easy one to make, she said. “I’m bashful, I’m just a country girl. I just thought it was time for somebody to make a move, not that I’m the best one to make the move.”
This was Waddell’s first foray into seeking an opportunity to perform public service. She’s the secretary and treasurer for Waddell Transfer that she and her husband and son have owned for 35 years.
“I know I’m new at this,” she said. “I’m going to be learning a lot. So will the people of Atkins. We can learn together. I’m looking forward to it, but I know it’s going to be a challenge.”
Her grandson was at the center of her thoughts as she considered a run for office. “I want to try to make a batter place for him and all the other kids so they can stay here and work. Everything’s going haywire. I want to get things levels back out for them.”
In education, she said, there’s No Child Left Behind, “but I think some children are left behind.” She also wants to be sure money earmarked for education gets there.
Waddle said improving communications between the public and the board is important to her. “People can see me every day. I’m going to be visible, accessible to people. I look forward to working with the people on the board and the people of Atkins.”
Another concern is getting water and sewer service. “We still have people who need water and sewer,” Waddell said. “Those are the two biggest things I want to work on. If I can help people know what’s going on, to get definite answers on what’s going to happen.”