Republican Mike Dugan is the new district 30 state senator after collecting 88-percent of the vote yesterday in the third and final special-election for that seat. Unofficially, Dugan claimed 3,299 votes in Carroll, Douglas and Paulding with Libertarian James Camp taking in 467 votes.

“This is the longest job interview that any of us have ever been on and now the job starts Monday,” said Dugan. “Tomorrow (Wednesday) I’ll be taking signs down and then I’ll catch up with people who (are already in the Capitol) and have already been given a lot of a preview for the legislative session coming up. I don’t want to walk in there… like the first day of school and not be prepared at all.”

Dugan claimed 82-percent of the votes in Douglas and 80-percent in Paulding.

After the votes were counted, Camp was congratulatory to Dugan and said “he will serve district 30 well.”
 He also questioned if the region can ever accept a non-traditional party candidate, despite having similar beliefs as their own.

“I Think this election just goes to show how stigmatized the voters are when it comes to having an (R) or a (D) next to a candidates name,” He said. ”I had pretty much the same conservative message that Mr. Dugan had but, yet voters just didn’t seem to care because I did not have the magical (R) or (D) next to my name. I think it goes to show the reason why that on the November 6^th elections we still have the status quo, is that people can’t get away from the two-party establishment that runs our government.”

Overall voter turnout was very low, with less than 4-percent of eligible voters in the district casting ballots—5-percent of registered voters showed in Carroll county alone.