JONESBOROUGH, Tenn. (WJHL) — Incumbent Republican Washington County Mayor Joe Grandy rode strong showings in north Johnson City, Gray and Jonesborough’s town limits in his narrow re-election win over Independent James Reeves on Aug. 4.
Grandy captured 50.5% of the 10,786 votes cast in an extremely low-turnout election, besting Reeves just as he did in the 2018 election. This time, the margin was even slimmer, with 141 votes separating the men where more than 600 had four years ago.
Grandy took 51.8% of the votes in 2018, winning the Town Acres precinct by more than 200 votes and the four separate Boones Creek precincts by more than 350 votes combined.
Like he did in 2018, Reeves ran the strongest in the western and southern areas of the county. He also garnered a majority of votes in the precincts on the south end of Johnson City.
The West View and Lamar precincts, which appeared to have some of the heaviest turnout, provided Reeves with 1,189 of his 5,311 votes, while Grandy picked up just 663 votes in the two rural precincts. That represented a 64-36% margin in favor of Reeves.
Grandy managed to win 65% of the vote in the combined Boones Creek and Freedom Hall precincts, though they represented a smaller total number of votes. He won 666 votes to Reeves’s 365 between those two precincts.
But adding in the Sulphur Springs, Jonesborough Visitors Center, two Gray and two Indian Trail precincts gave Grandy a combined 608-vote edge among those eight total precincts — 58% of the 3,814 votes cast in those areas, which accounted for nearly a third of all the votes.
