Republican candidates won the seven commissioner positions up for election
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Republican candidates swept state agriculture elections on Tuesday night.
In 38 U.S. states, the governor appoints the agriculture commissioner, while elections are held in the remaining 12 states.
Elections occurred in seven of those states on Nov. 8.
Here’s how the votes shaped up.
Alabama
Republican incumbent Rick Pate defeated Libertarian candidate Jason Clark to win re-election.
Available election data shows Pate received 943,573 votes, or 84.9 percent of the vote, with 69 percent of votes counted.
Florida
Florida was among the states guaranteed to have a new ag commissioner after Democrat Nikki Fried left that post to challenge Rick DeSantis for the governorship.
Republican Wilton Simpson, an egg farmer, received 4,504,323 votes, or 59 percent of the votes in Florida.
Democrat candidate Naomi Blemur received 3,090,023 votes, or 41 percent of the state’s support.
Georgia
Georgia’s ag community also elected a new ag commissioner on Tuesday after former commissioner Gary Black stepped down to pursue a Republican Senate nomination.
With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Republican Tyler Harper is slated to become the state’s next ag commissioner.
The seventh-generation farmer received 2,049,736 votes, good enough for 53 percent of the state’s support.
Democrat Nakita Hemingway garnered 1,739,660 votes, or 45 percent of the state votes.
Libertarian candidate David Raudabaugh earned 2 percent of the vote with 84,763 ballots.
Iowa
Republican incumbent Mike Naig cruised to victory over Democrat challenger John Norwood.
At last count, Naig received 727,414 votes, giving him 61 percent of the voter support compared to Norwood’s 462,057 votes, or 39 percent of the total support.
North Dakota
Doug Goehring, the Republican incumbent, won re-election on Tuesday night after 176,943 people, or 75.8 percent of voters, cast a ballot in his favor.
Democrat challenger Fintan Dooley received 56,481 votes, or 24.2 percent of voter support.
South Carolina
In South Carolina, Republican incumbent Hugh Weathers easily won re-election on Tuesday night.
As of Wednesday morning, with 73 percent of the state’s votes in, Weathers received 1,073,382 votes, earning him 77.9 percent of the vote.
His next closest challenger, David Edmond of the Green Party, earned 210,869 votes, or 15.3 percent of the vote.
And about 6.9 percent of voters in South Carolina, or 94,531 people, voted for Chris Nelums of the United Citizens Party.
Texas
Sid Miller, the Republican incumbent won another term as Texas Agriculture Commissioner after receiving 56.4 percent of the vote.
More than 4.45 million Texans voted for Miller.
Democrat challenger Susan Hays received 3.4 million votes, or 43.6 percent of the vote.
The other jurisdictions where voters elect their state agriculture commissioners, directors or secretaries are Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and West Virginia.
Republicans hold all those seats too.
Results are still coming in for House and Senate elections.
As of 10:30a.m, the Republicans have won 47 Senate seats compared to 46 for the Democrats.
A party needs 51 Senate seats for a majority.
In the House races, the Democrats have won 174 seats and the Republicans have won 199 seats.
A party needs 218 seats for a majority in the House of Representatives.