Politicians have come up with a number of creative ways to celebrate a campaign win over the years, from dancing under a hail of confetti to laying a big smooch on their spouse for the requisite, post-win photo-op.

Joe Walton, who last week won the District one seat on the Powhatan County Board of Supervisors, celebrated just a little differently. He headed for Mexico.

Walton, who defeated incumbent Russ Holland by 74 votes (see results, pg.7A) wasn’t fleeing, just finally slipping away for he and his wife’s overdue honeymoon.

The couple married in June, but had elected to postpone their getaway until after the all-consuming work of campaigning was finished.

Now that the election is over, the information technology specialist will have a few days to enjoy his win before officially getting down to business. Once he gets back, the plan is to “just go talk to people,” said Walton.

His main goal for the next four years, he said, “is to stay with quality commercial development, and to hit the ground running on [plans for Route] 711 and 288. We need to make those really work for the county.”

As Walton prepared for his trip, country registrar Inez Poe was starting to put her office back together.

While the elections cause an unavoidable amount of havoc in her office every four years, Poe insisted the process this time had gone as smoothly as it could.

Though the 40.4 percent turnout at the polls was less then she had been hoping for, Poe said she was pleased that they had had no problems with the voting machines.

“Actually, we had a very uneventful day,” Poe reported.

There were 18 races in the county, and seven of those, including Sherriff and Commonwealth’s Attorney, were uncontested. But a number of the contested races were close, including the fight for District 3 Board of Supervisors seat in which long-time Supervisor Robert Cosby defeated Barry Hodge by just 70 votes.

One race that had received its fair share amount of media attention even outside the county, was for Clerk of Court. In the end, Bill Maxey, 86, recognized as the longest serving Clerk of the court in Virginia, was elected to another eight-year term.

It will be his seventh.

For new supervisor Carson Tucker, who narrowly defeated Kenneth Hatcher for the BOS seat in District 5, the results of this year’s election served to highlight the general mood of the population.

“A lot of good people ran for office; that’s good news” said Tucker. “People care.”

But Tucker also noted that the number of close elections supported the idea that people were ready for a change.

“It’s a clear message that the way we have always done business, in the eyes of the people, may not be the best way to deal successfully with tomorrow’s challenges.”

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