Tagert Wins MDOT Race

Mike Tagert of Starkville has defeated John Caldwell of Nesbit in Tuesday's runoff for Northern District Transportation Commissioner.

Complete, but unofficial, returns show Tagert, of Starkville and president of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Development Council, with about 53 percent of the vote against Caldwell, transportation director for the DeSoto County School District.

(For a full breakdown of DeSoto County's precinct numbers go to www.desototimes.com/elections/elections.htm.)

Unofficial returns show Tagert received 21,111 votes or 53 percent compared to Caldwell who garnered 18,737 votes or 47 percent.

'We did the best we could do,' a weary Caldwell said after the vote totals came in. 'We had seven people in this race when we started. Everybody put their best foot forward. There was no name calling. It was a very straight up race. I appreciate everyone's support.'

Caldwell carried his native DeSoto handily, along with Marshall, Tate, and Yalobusha counties but lost populous Lee County to Tagert by a 57 to 43 percent margin.

'I expected to win Lee County and I'm disappointed with that,' Caldwell said as vote totals showed he lost DeSoto County's rival county to the east. 'You win some and you lose some.'

Despite cold wet rainy weather on election day, DeSoto County managed a little more than 8 percent turnout, which was better than the 6 percent turnout in the Jan. 11 election.

Still, with 86,354 registered voters only 7,659 made it to the polls.