Bradley Byrne and Dean Young have cleared the first hurdle in the race to succeed Rep. Jo Bonner as Alabama’s First Congressional District representative.
With all 246 precincts reporting, former state senator and chancellor of the two-year college system Bradley Byrne topped businessman Dean Young by an 18,090-12,011 vote margin, followed by State Rep. Chad Fincher (8,177), long-time conservative journalist Quin Hillyer (7,260) and former Republican National Committee aide Wells Griffith (5,758).
Byrne and Young now head to a run-off, which will be decided on Nov. 5.
“It really doesn’t make any difference to us who we were — we knew we were going to be in a run-off, number one,” Byrne told Mobile FOX affiliate WALA’s Steve Alexander immediately upon hearing the results. “And it really didn’t make a difference to us which one of these fine candidates were going to be in the run-off with us. People ran great races for non-candidates, people really ran great races so we had a really choppy vote here because of that. But we’re real pleased to have run as strong as we have and if it’s Mr. Young in the run-off, it’s fine with us.”
According to Mobile-Pensacola CBS affiliate WKRG, Young had downplayed polling that had showed him trailing beyond second place and said that the state of the nation was what propelled him to such a strong showing.
“The difference is, the state of our nation and the people are seeing what’s going on in our country and they’re upset,” Young said to WKRG. “And it’s striking a nerve with people. They know that I’ll go up there and stand up for them and what they believe in and what made this country great.”
The winner of the Byrne-Young matchup will face Burton LeFlore, who secured the Democratic Party nomination on Tuesday night.
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