Eight days after Election Day, officials on Wednesday confirmed Democratic nominee Chad Scott as the new sheriff in Alachua County. A recount of the close outcome took days to resolve.
The Supervisor of Elections Office said it would formally declare Scott the winner after its next canvassing board meeting to certify the results, which was expected to happen Friday. In the final results, Scott beat incumbent Republican Emery Gainey by 392 votes out of 133,650 total ballots.
On Election Night, Scott publicly declared victory at the Democrats’ watch party, even though he knew a recount was likely, he said.
“I felt like the election was pretty much over on election night,” he said. “I pretty much knew just from talking to people and the different politicians that have witnessed recounts, (they) normally don’t change much. I was confident things wouldn’t change.”
In the hours after the recount outcome was announced, Scott said Gainey had not yet called him to concede and acknowledge him as the sheriff-elect.
“I'm just glad it's confirmed,” he said.
Once sworn in, his first priority will be ensuring others know his leadership style and goal of making the agency premier again, he said, suggesting it was that way during his previous time at the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office.
The machine recount over four days – required under Florida law because the outcome was so close – subtracted three votes from Scott’s total, elections office spokesman Aaron Klein said. Klein said that could have happened from voters checking instead of bubbling their preference, or otherwise incorrectly marking the ballot.
“Ultimately, it was such a small discrepancy in the totals for all the candidates that the percentage remained the same,” Klein said.
Scott is a former senior official in the sheriff’s office in a county known as a Democratic stronghold that hasn’t elected a Republican sheriff since 2004. The county was one of only six out of Florida’s 67 counties where Vice President Kamala Harris beat former President Donald Trump.
Gainey, appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis after Clovis Watson resigned, made it close. He spent nearly three times as much money – $224,950 – as Scott did on his campaign, including more than $185,000 on advertising and campaign signs and T-shirts. Gainey raised about 40% of his campaign money from donors outside Alachua County.
A third-party candidate, Pamela Marshall-Koons, earned just over 6% of the votes in the race.
Scott had resigned from the sheriff’s office under Gainey to run for election and was working as a captain for the Alachua Police Department. A spokesman there, Thomas Stanfield, said the city will search for his successor on the police force.