CAIRO — Sheriff Harry Young cruised his way to a fifth consecutive term in office Tuesday night, leading the way for a number of Republican office holders down ballot who also won re-election in Grady County.

Young defeated challenger Donald “Dickie” Thomas 62 percent to 38 percent, ensuring that he remains in office until at least 2025.

The longtime sheriff, now set to hold office for 20 years, had kind words to say of Thomas, a former employee of his at the sheriff’s office.

“We had a good, clean campaign, the both of us,” Young said. “I appreciate the way he ran his campaign. He came and hugged me and I hugged him and we’re still friends, but I’m glad I won.”

Young’s victory comes after a hard-fought primary in which he fended off multiple challengers and did not secure his party’s nomination until a tightly contested runoff in August.

Elsewhere in the county, Republican June Knight easily dispatched Democratic challenger Ralph Harris by capturing 81.5 percent of the vote in the race for the Grady County Board of Commissioners District 1 seat. 

Commissioner LaFaye Copeland, who secured reelection by defeating former commissioner Charles Renaud in District 4 by 28 percentage points, was the lone Democrat to win a partisan contest in Grady County Tuesday.

Coroner Rusty Powe, also a Republican, easily fended off a challenge from Latasha Copeland with more than 71 percent of the vote.

At the presidential level, Donald Trump took home 65.74 percent of the vote, slightly downfrom the 65.79 percent he captured four years ago, but with a higher total of raw votes. Joe Biden won 33.75 percent of the vote, with Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgen snagging 54votes to round out the total.

Down ballot, Republican Senator David Perdue took 6,962 votes to Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff’s 3,455, while Representative Sanford Bishop (D-Albany) managed 3,917 votes to Republican challenger Don Cole’s 6,580. In the jungle primary for the Senate seat formerly held by Johnny Isakson, Republican Doug Collins took 3,473 votes, Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler took 2,717 votes and Democrats Raphael Warnock and Matt Lieberman took 1,399 and 294 votes, respectively.

State Rep. Darlene Taylor (R-Thomasville) snagged 6,909 votes to Democratic candidate and former Cairo Mayor Booker Gainor’s 3,651 in her own reelection bid.

Republican Party chair Jeff Jolly said he was proud of his party’s performance Tuesday.

“I feel really good about it,” he said. “We improved on Trump’s total from 2016, we improved on Herman West’s total from 2018 in the congressional race. Republicans did well here.”

Jolly attributed his party’s success to Grady County’s conservative tilt and to a motivated grassroots operation.

“We had a lot of volunteers that worked hard for our candidates,” he said. 

Races for tax commissioner, magistrate, clerk of court and probate judge were non-competitive affairs as incumbents successfully won re-election unopposed. School board members Teresa Gee Hardy, Jeff Worsham and Gerald Goosby were also re-elected unopposed.

Tuesday’s election saw record early turnout, with more than 7,800 votes being cast before election day either in-person or by mail — a majority of all ballots cast. Another 2,600 voters cast their ballots Tuesday.

Overall, voter participation was down nearly 10 percentage points from 2016, with 67.69 percent of registered voters casting ballots.