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Voters in Rockbridge County and Buena Vista overwhelmingly voted to send Donald Trump back to the White House and Rep. Ben Cline back to Congress in last week’s election.
Voters in Rockbridge County, Lexington and Buena Vista also made their voices heard in several local races, including the inaugural election for seats on the Lexington School Board.
Tammy Dunn, the lone candidate in the School Board race who was seeking reelection, won the most votes with 1,330. The other three candidates vying for two seats on the Board were separated by a margin of 53 votes, with the seats going to Kasey Potter and Katie Masey, who won 1,126 and 1,108 votes, respectively. Meghan Ferguson, the fourth candidate on the ballot, received 1,073 votes.
In the Lexington City Council race, incumbent candidates Marylin Alexander and Leslie Straughan each will retain their seats. Alexander had the most votes in the race with 1,478 and Straughan finished second with 1,371. John Driscoll won the third Council seat up for election with 1,244 votes. Madeline Robinson, the other candidate on the ballot, secured 933 votes.
Mayor Frank Friedman, who ran unopposed, was also reelected, with 2,028 votes.
In Buena Vista, the special election for the open seat on City Council went to Stanley Coffey, who won 1,320 votes over opponent Jody Fix’s 1,099.
Both Goshen and Glasgow had seats on their town councils up for election this year. Glasgow had three seats up for election, with the three incumbent candidates all running for reelection. Natalie Harris secured the most votes with 237, while Marcie Hill and Brandall Branch won 205 and 194 votes, respectively.
There were two seats up for grabs on Goshen Town Council. Shelia Sampson won the most votes with 92 and incumbent Steve Bickley secured 88 votes to retain his seat. Jeff Shaffer, the third candidate running for Council, got 57 votes.
The proposed state constitutional amendment was approved by an overwhelming majority of voters in both cities and the county, with 2,549 yes votes in Buena Vista, 2,511 in Lexington, and 11,506 in Rockbridge County.
In the national races, Donald Trump won Rockbridge County with 8,304 votes to Vice President Kamala Harris’s 4,085. Trump also carried Buena Vista, with 1,928 votes to Harris’s 736.
Republican candidates in the Senate and congressional races also won in Buena Vista and the county. Hung Cao outperformed Tim Kaine in Buena Vista by a margin of nearly 1,000 votes (1,800 to 887), and Ben Cline won 1,968 votes in the city to Ken Mitchell’s 664. In the county, Cao won 8,056 votes, while Kaine got 4,438, and Cline won with 8,474 votes over Mitchell’s 3,869.
Democrats fared better in Lexington, with Harris outperforming Trump by a wide margin. The vice president received 1,795 votes, while Trump got 1,030. Kaine led Cao 1,817 to 1,031, and Mitchell had 1,671 votes to Cline’s 1,097.
Voter turnout in Rockbridge County was at 74 percent, with 12,648 of the 16,986 registered voters casting ballots. Lexington and Buena Vista had turnouts of 64 and 59 percent, respectively. In Buena Vista, 2,743 voters of the 4,623 registered cast a ballot, as did 2,911 of Lexington’s 4,532 registered voters.
