Behind by fewer than 100 votes all evening, David Wylie narrowly secured the win in the Republican primary runoff for Denton County Precinct 4 commissioner on Tuesday, defeating Valerie Roehrs by just 31 votes as the GOP choice to replace incumbent Dianne Edmonson on the Nov. 3 ballot.
In complete but unofficial results, Wylie earned 8,903 votes (50.09%) compared to Roehrs' 8,872 votes (49.91%).
Reached Tuesday evening, Wylie agreed it was a close race all evening and seemed surprised by his last-minute win. He called it “quite the evening.”
“Denton County is a tightly knit community of people who are wonderful stewards of their homes,” Wylie said. “Grassroots people came together to speak to their elected officials positively and of their hearts and dreams. My deepest thanks to the precinct chairs and volunteers for the countless hours you have given to our campaign.”
Roehrs couldn’t be reached for comment by late Tuesday night.
Wylie will be facing Democrat Stephanie Draper, a small business owner, in the Nov. 3 general election.
Precinct 4 covers the southwest portion of Denton County from Argyle to Northlake, Ponder, Justin and Flower Mound and includes parts of Denton.
Roehrs spent $616,633, the majority of which was self-funded, in her attempt to secure the Precinct 4 seat, recent campaign finance reports show.
Wylie spent about $117,315, according to campaign finance reports.
Earlier this month, Roehrs said she came into the race “completely unknown and an outsider” trying to unseat an incumbent.
Roehrs pushed out Edmondson and a challenger, Denton Mayor Gerard Hudspeth, in a packed Republican primary in early March.
But she was unable to pull ahead of Wylie, who has been active in the Republican Party since the late 1980s and received dozens of endorsements from local and state Republican officials.
A total of 17,775 ballots were cast for this Precinct 4 runoff race during early voting and on election day, according to the Denton County Elections Administration.
As is typical, more people voted in the March 3 primary election that preceded the runoff, with 24,903 ballots tallied in the four-way race for the Republican nomination.
Roehrs gained support in the runoff compared to March, when she had 5,772 votes in her favor, while Wylie's total dropped from his 9,181 in March.
It wasn’t an easy race for Wylie or Roehrs, both of whom faced controversy as the runoff election day approached.
Roehrs is facing an ethics complaint for filing her preelection January and February election reports three days after the March 3 primary. She told the Denton Record-Chronicle last week that she was late with her filing, in part, because she’d been dealing with a family emergency that resulted in a family member’s death.
In 2018, the Texas Ethics Commission issued a $2,500 fine against Wylie for failing to file his campaign reports on time. He told the Record-Chronicle he was unaware he needed to file the reports and filed them as soon as he realized it.
On the endorsement front, Wylie seemed to be the front-runner going into the runoff. More and more endorsements from Republican officials continued to pour in the closer it got to the election, including Denton County Judge Andy Eads' approval.
CHRISTIAN McPHATE can be reached at 940-220-4299 and cmcphate@dentonrc.com.
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