SAN ANTONIO -- While the presidential race was extremely close, so was the race for Bexar County sheriff, coming down to less than one percent of the vote
The race for Sheriff was tight from the start but looked good for Republican and current Sheriff Susan Pamerleau. Early voting had her up by more than 10,000 votes. However, slowly but surely, that lead would diminish and Democratic challenger Javier Salazar would win with just over 4,000 votes, or less than one percent.
The race was so close that Sheriff Pamerleau did not concede until Wednesday.
“This was a very different year. Like, I have more votes this year than I did when I won the race, so there’s a lot of dynamics involved in that,” Sheriff Pamerleau said.
One of those dynamics was third-party candidates. Pamerleau said that she believes those candidates made a dent in her numbers. Salazar said that his biggest strength was his ground game and purposely targeting the northwest portion of Bexar County.
“We knew there was a large concentration of independent voters that we targeted and we were out there just making door to door, person to person contact on a daily basis,” Salazar said.
After a grueling campaign, less than 24 hours after Election Day, the two opponents will now be working together to protect Bexar County.
“I talked to Mr. Salazar earlier [Wednesday] and I’ve advised him that I’m committed to working with him and his team to ensure public safety is our number one priority, even through this transition,” Sheriff Pamerleau said.
“I have all the confidence in the world it’s going to be a very smooth transition. The taxpayers aren’t going to notice a thing. It’s going to be a very seamless transition,” Salazar promised.
Sheriff Pamerleau was very gracious in defeat on Wednesday and talked about how proud she was of all that she accomplished over the last four years.
One other factor that played a big difference in the race was the fact that there was a 57,000 vote difference in favor of Democrats that voted straight party.