Tuesday night’s primary election was tough for Jim Cox, a long-time political consultant in Columbia County.
One of his clients, incumbent Columbia County Commissioner Dewey Galeas, lost to a political neophyte, Alison Couch, in the District 4 race.
Another client, Wayne Guilfoyle, who moved onto a runoff election in the Richmond County Commission District 10 race, would have lost outright if the leader in the three-way race, John Clarke, had gotten 1% more of the votes.
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His other client, Columbia County District Attorney Bobby Christine, won his race, but he was unopposed.
But 30-plus years of working on political campaigns has taught Cox you win some and lose some. The key is to learn from mistakes, he said.
“It was a spirited campaign, and it’s one you hate to lose, but you know it’s going to happen at some point, if you do enough of these things,” Cox said. “Having done 320 or 330 of these over the years, we have been lucky to have more winners than losers.”
Cox shared some of his initial insights into the local and state elections in a wide ranging interview the day after the primary. Cox also serves as the Columbia County Planning Commission chairman.
Cox dug into the precinct voting data for the Columbia County District 4 race and noted that in Grovetown and Appling, where Galeas has more support, Galeas only received a few more votes than Couch. But in the precincts in and around Harlem, Couch trounced Galeas. At the Second Mount Moriah Baptist Church precinct, for example, Couch earned 238 votes to Galeas’ 94.
Overall, Couch got 5.7% more of the votes. She also had a much more energetic campaign with about 30 core supporters who put up signs and showed up to events wearing her campaign T-shirts. Galeas supporters were outnumbered 3-1 at the two debates for District 4.
Galeas will serve as a lame duck commissioner for the next seven months. Couch will be unopposed on the November general election ballot since no other candidates qualified to run. She will be sworn in in January 2023 and said she wants to make road building and relief of traffic problems a priority.
Cox said Couch will quickly learn that it takes about 10 years to fund, plan and build new county roads. Influencing the state of Georgia Department of Transportation, as a county commissioner, is difficult.
“I have a feeling the kind of reception she is going to get,” Cox said. “It will also be interesting to see if she will become an insider and then she gets on the outs with the folks who elected her because she becomes one of the good ol’ boys.”
Connie Melear, the only other woman on the Columbia County Commission, said she and the other commissioners are ready to welcome Couch.
“I think she’ll do a fine job. Her heart is in the right place,” Melear said. “We are 100% dedicated to make sure she is successful and hits the ground running.”
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Cox said he was not surprised the two incumbent Columbia County School Board members won re-election, citing the opposing candidates’ focus on critical race theory and book banning, which he said were not serious issues in Columbia County.
He is a supporter of Gov. Brian Kemp, but was still surprised how badly the incumbent beat former Sen. David Perdue. Kemp won 73.7% of the statewide vote to Perdue’s 21.8%, despite Perdue getting support from former Pres. Donald Trump.
As for the future in Columbia County, Cox predicts voters will focus on public safety, the economy and jobs. But he also expects within 10 years, Democrats will start to run candidates in Columbia County. No Democrats filed for any local partisan race for the 2022 primary. But Cox said an influx of people from Maryland and northern Virginia, especially with NSA-Georgia and Army Cyber Command at Fort Gordon, will move Columbia County from a solidly Republican-voting county to one that is evenly split.
“It’s coming,” he said.
Joshua B. Good is a staff reporter covering Columbia County and military/veterans’ issues for The Augusta Press. Reach him at joshua@theaugustapress.com
