On a flood of Tipton County votes, most of them from 
JB
THE AGONY OF DEFEAT: Lonnie Treadaway, who recently lost his bid to join the Memphis City Council, consoles Heidi Shafer as she confronts the numbers at her election-night party at Exline’s Pizza on Stage Road. Shafer was one of three Shelby Countians to lag behind GOP nominee Paul Rose of Tipton County in voting for the Republican nomination for state Senate District 32.
early voting, Covington businessman/farmer Paul Rose easily won the Republican nomination to succeed federal judge Mark Norris in the vacated District 32 state Senate seat.
Three Shelby Countians —former County Commissioners George Chism and Heidi Shafer, and former state Representative Steve McManus — brought up the rear behind Rose, all trailing the Covington candidate even in Shelby County. In Tipton County, Rose’s margin was 83 percent. Cumulatively, he won something like two/thirds of the overall vote in both counties.
None of the Shelby County candidates had anything but marginal vote totals in Tipton. Rose won 4,132 of the 4,632 votes cast there. In Shelby the vote went this way: Rose, 2,266; Chism, 1,512; Shafer, 1,322; McManus, 1,055.
Given the fact of the much larger overall pool of voters in Shelby County, it would seem obvious that a much higher turnout rate in Tipton County, coupled with an apparent determination of voters there to elect one of their own, figured large in the outcome.
Democrat Eric R. Coleman, with 377 votes in Shelby County and 166 in Tipton County won his nomination without opposition and will be matched against Rose on the March 12th general election ballot.
