A heated county commissioner race in Chatham County saw Republican candidates fall short to two Democratic candidates and one unaffiliated newcomer on Tuesday night.

Current county commissioners Karen Howard and Mike Dasher won their respective races in District 01 and 02. Howard, who has served on the board since 2014, defeated former U.S. Army officer Jay Stobbs by just less than 4,000 votes. Dasher, who was elected in 2016, beat small business owner Jimmy Pharr by a similar margin, winning 54.4% of the vote.

Andy Wilkie, the lone Republican incumbent candidate who was appointed to the board in 2019, is down to unaffiliated candidate Franklin Gomez Flores at the end of Election Day. The Guatemalan-born and Siler City-based Flores led by a slim 322 votes with all of the county’s precincts reporting their voting totals. The race’s result may hinge on the final count of mailed-in absentee ballots, which will be accepted through November 12 as they arrive to the state Board of Elections.

If elected, Flores will become the first Latino commissioner in Chatham County’s history, which has seen its 12.5% Hispanic population continue to increase in recent years.

The commissioner races were tinged with tension left over the removal of a Confederate monument from the historic courthouse in Pittsboro, which the Board of County Commissioners voted to remove in August 2019. Protests as recent as Saturday saw community members come to blows over the issues of racism and support of the Confederacy.

Pharr, Stobbs and Wilkie campaigned together in Chatham County under the banner of more transparency from the board.

For more local, state and national election coverage, visit Chapelboro’s 2020 Elections page.

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