About 38 percent of registered voters cast ballots

Phew. It's over.

Campaign signs and billboards that have littered the roadways will start to come down. Politics that have filled newspaper headlines should begin to dwindle and life will slowly return to some semblance of normalcy.

Despite the blistering winds that might have signaled change Tuesday, things largely stayed the same.

Edd Houck keeps his seat in the Virginia Senate. Terry Yowell was re-elected to another term as Commissioner of the Revenue. Gary Close will remain the Commonwealth's Attorney and Major Jim Branch takes over for his current boss, H. Lee Hart, as Culpeper County sheriff.

The biggest change to come from Tuesday's election will be the addition of Tom Underwood to the County Board of Supervisors. Underwood defeated 16-year incumbent John Coates by 80 votes.

Voters trickled steadily to the polls. Out of 24,479 registered voters the registrar's office reported 9,465 ballots cast this year - that's 38 percent voter turnout.

The hot topic this year was the sheriff's race. The campaign between Branch and Sgt. Scott Jenkins played out in the headlines.

"There's been a lot of he-said, he-said … back and forth between the candidates and who's campaigning for them," Stevensburg voter Sheila Rutherford, 33.

Many voters said they were fed up with "mudslinging."
"It's nasty. I've never seen a sheriff's race this kind of nasty," Stevensburg voter Gary Burwell said. "It didn't draw me out; it helped me decide on who to come out here and vote for."

Town voter Heather Norman, 35, said schools and the budget were her most important election issues. As for the sheriff's race, that got annoying, she said.

"It got to finger pointing and name calling. I'd rather hear what they're planning to do," said Norman, a nurse at Culpeper Regional Hospital.

Salem voter Margaret Buraker, who works in adult literacy, said the Branch-Jenkins race caught her attention.

"The sheriff's race is important to me," Buraker said, adding, "Well, my brother-in-law works in the sheriff's department. It was really a very hard decision."

For as much as the sheriff's race was blamed for voter headaches, it's also to thank for a strong turnout.

At least 9,296 ballots were cast for Sheriff, dwarfing the more than 6,724 votes in 2003's Hart-Rick Pinksaw race. Indeed, not all voters were jaded by politics.

Stevensburg voter Susan Ishmael, 51, whose great grandfather was a congressman, said her biggest concern was public safety as the community grows. The politics, well, that's just politics.
"It's been going on in politics for a hundred years and it always will," Ishmael said.

Katie Dolac can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 138 or .