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Bridges, Gilbert get new courthouse roles
Barring some unforeseen addition to the November election ballot, Tracy Bridges and Heather Gilbert essentially traded courthouse jobs Tuesday, thanks to the Republican voters of Putnam County.
Bridges, who is presently in the final year of an eight-year run as county recorder, captured the Putnam County clerk GOP nomination in a seven-vote primary triumph, 2,049-2,042, over longtime Clerk’s Office employee Debbie Ensor.
Gilbert, who was immersed in the role of clerk for Tuesday night’s election as she nears the end of her eight-year tenure, secured 58.9 percent of the vote in claiming the county recorder office nomination over former auditor Lorie Hallett-Talbert, 2,363-1,647.
Not only did Bridges endure a narrow election victory but also the emotions of having the clerk’s race incorrectly announced to the courthouse gathering.
“It was a little stressful,” Bridges, who has 22 years in various courthouse offices on her resume, said. “It was crazy.
“I eked by by seven votes.”
Bridges noted the randomness of the voting process, recalling how a woman from the northern part of the county had been in her office recently.
“She said, ‘I voted for you.’ And I said, ‘Oh, thank you.’”
Then the woman explained her voting strategy.
“I don’t know many people,” she said, “but I know some Bridges people up north and they’re nice, so I voted for you.”
It could easily have been reversed, Bridges reasoned.
“She could have known some Ensors up north and voted for Debbie,” she added. “That’s as random as it gets.”
Bridges, whose mother, Opal Sutherlin, is a former two-term clerk, said she would strive to change the election-night reveal program.
“That whole thing from last night needs to be changed,” she said Wednesday. “That white board has to go.
“We need to be digitized,” Bridges added, noting that the white board with 31 precincts having vertical columns for results is passé now that the county uses eight voter centers instead.
It could be replaced by a video screen, she suggested, so that voters can follow the results as they come in as they used to.
The woman reading the results to the second-floor gathering read them wrong Tuesday night, Bridges said, reporting Ensor as the victor, if only briefly.
“I heard the Ensor camp erupt, and I thought, ‘Did I lose?’" Bridges said of the error. "That can never happen again.”
Barring an independent challenger or an unknown Democrat able to earn a countywide victory in a county where a Republican holds every office, Bridges will take office Jan. 1. She plans to bring Roxann Carter and Vicki Oliver with her from the Recorder’s Office.
Currently there is no Democrat candidate slated to oppose either Bridges or Gilbert on the November ballot.