The Record Newspapers - Hometown News For Orange County, Texas

Across the nation, people were on the edge of their seats as election results came in and the numbers for each candidate increased along with the gap between them.

Nationally, the race went back and forth and as of press time, Barack Obama (D) was declared the winner with 303 votes in the electoral college while Mitt Romney (R) received 206 electoral votes.

In Orange County, there were 30827 votes cast. Those voting straight tickets totaled 16,801 with 12,198 for Republicans and 4,438 votes for Democrat candidates. There were 136 people who voted for the Libertarian party while there were 29 votes for the Green party.

In the presidential race in Orange County, Mitt Romney (R) won the race with 23,361 votes compared to Barack Obama’s (D) 6,797 votes. In addition, Gary Johnson received 280 votes and Jill Stein received 64 votes. There were 136 votes for a write-in candidate.

In other races, for the position of United States Senator, Ted Cruz(R) won the election with 21,866 votes in Orange County and 4,098,107 in the state . His opponent Paul Sadler(D) had 7,562 votes in Orange County and 2,831,967 state votes. John Jay Meyers (L) had 520 votes in Orange County and 138, 247 statewide votes while David Collins (G) had 175 votes in Orange County and 58,614 votes for the entire state.

For the election of U.S. Representative, Steve Stockman (R) won with 21,564 votes in Orange County and 160,161 statewide, 7,364 votes in Orange County for Max Martin (D) and 57,681 votes in the state and Michael Cole (L) received 1.006 votes and 6.007 statewide.

Christi Craddick (R) won the job as Railroad Commissioner in Orange County and received 3,905,855 total votes.

Barry Smitherson (R) also won the position as Railroad Commissioner in Orange County and a total of 4,160,757 votes.

Dan Willet (R) won the vote in Orange County by a large margin for the position of Supreme Court Justice Place 2 and 4,376,607 votes. In the Place 4 Supreme Court Justice position, John Devine (R) won in Orange County and across the state.

Supreme Court Justice Place 4 was won by Nathan Hecht (R) in Orange County and across the state. Sharon Keller (R) overwhelmingly won the job as Presiding Judge Court of Criminal Appeals. Barbara Parker Harvey (R) won the vote for Place 7 Judge Court of Appeals. Eksa Alcala (R) won in Place 8 Court of Appeals.

In the race for the State Board of Education, David Bradley (R) defeated his opponent.

Robert Nichols (R) was elected to be the State Senator in District 3.

In results from Orange County, indications from early on showed a clear winner in the local races.

Mandy White-Rogers(R) won by a wide margin. She received 21,610 votes while her opponent, Mike Abbott (D), had 8,454 votes.

“I’m thankful for all the support everyone has shown me. I’m blessed. I give all glory to God. He’s been with me all along. I have so many friends and family members and a long list of people I need to thank. I’m going to be writing thank you letters for a long time,” said White-Rogers. “I had just a tremendous amount of help and support.”

“My first goal is to go to judge school on Dec. 3,” she said. White-Rogers ran for an unexpired term. She can take office as soon as the votes are counted and she is sworn in. “I don’t know when that is going to all take place, but if it’s all done by the 16th of November, I want to take office then.” White-Rogers said she still has a few cases to conclude. In fact, White-Rogers said she has a protective order hearing Wednesday in front of Judge Pat Clark in the very court room she will be taking over. “I’m going to check out my new courtroom,” she said with a smile. “I’ll look at it in a whole new light!”

In the race for Precinct 1 County Commissioner, David Dubose (R) defeated James Stringer (D) with 4,214 votes to 3.287.

“There are some unfinished projects I’ll get to finish. There is more work to do,”David Dubose said. He said there is more work to do on the budget. He wanted to thank James Stringer for running a clean campaign. “It wasn’t negative, he ran his race and I ran mine.”

John Banken (R) defeated John Dubose (D) for County Commissioner Precinct 3 with 4,389 votes to 3,505.

“I want to thank God first, and then I want to thank the people that helped me, my family and everyone that worked hard,” said Banken. “I know there were a lot of people that worked hard for me.”

He said, “The first goal I have is to get my feet on the ground and look at the budget. We’ve got to get our budget under control and we’ve got to get our spending under control, because we can absolutely not raise taxes anymore.”

This was Banken’s third run for commissioner.

Chris Humble (R) will retain his job of Constable Precinct 1 with 4.540 votes while Sarah Jefferson-Simon (D) received 2,974 votes.

Voters chose David Cagle (R) for Constable of Precinct 2 with 4,992 votes while his opponent Lynn Arceneaux (D) fell short with 2,786 votes.

“I’m really excited about the win. I really appreciate all the support I got from my family and friends. I’m ready to go to work. I guess I’ll have to wait till January, but it couldn’t come a day too soon.” Cagle said he will just see how things work when he first gets in office. “You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, hopefully I can improve on how things are done.”

Other candidates who won their races and had no opponent were:

•Troy Johnson - Judge County Court of Law No. 2

•John Kimbrough - County Attorney

•Keith Merritt - Sheriff

•Lynda Gunstream - County Tax Assessor Collector

•Courtney Burch-Arkeen - District Judge 128th District Court

•Dennis Powell - District Judge 163rd District Court

•Hollis Horton - 9th Court of Appeals District 4

•David Gaultney - 9th Court of Appeals District 3

•Allen Ritter - State Representative District 21.

•Mark Philpott - Constable Pct.3

•Weldon Peveto - Constable Pct. 4