MONDAY, AUGUST 3 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU A
one under the lights in front of the
Cairo Messenger, where White
candidates and their White sup-
porters sat in lawn chairs with
coolers of sodas, and the one
across the street, where Duke and
his smaller group of supporters
stood in a half-dark parking lot,
looking on.
They watched the chairman of
the county Republican Party chat-
ting on the other side. He was the
one who had encouraged Duke to
run on the GOP ticket.
“I think they told him to be on
the Republican ticket to trap
him,” said Sonia. “They wanted to
knock him out of the race.”
“They don’t give you a chance,
and that’s on purpose,” said Mon-
tez.
They watched Harry drifting
around the crowd until a man led
him by the elbow to a truck and
drove him away.
“That’s our leadership, y’all,”
said Queen.
“When they start talking about
marching to get him out, I don’t
want to hear it,” said Sonia. “No
way. D on’t bother me.”
“They don’t understand — this
little vote for sheriff here? This
affects us more than the president
of the United States does,” said
Montez’s husband.
“This is a direct impact,” said
Queen.
They talked into the night
about strategy and politics and
life in a rural county in the South,
and near 1 a.m., the door of the
Messenger opened, and the offi-
cial began writing in the final
tallies. Queen crossed the street
and copied them down in her
notebook.
Duke, 357. Clark, 1,526. Harry,
2,042.
She crossed back over.
“So, y’all,” she said to the others.
“What’s the next move?”I
n the morning, Harry got to
his office earlier than usual,
anticipating all the calls.
“It was just stressful,” he was
saying to one of his friends. “But I
think I got enough support to g o
ahead and finish it off.”
The runoff was still weeks
away, and November distant. For
now, he was still the sheriff of
Grady County, his white button-
down freshly ironed, his badge on
his belt, his walkie-talkie on his
desk next to a booklet on the
powers of constitutional officers.
His phone rang again.
“Yep, I’m in a runoff, buddy,” h e
said to Doug Hanks, the sheriff of
Cook County. “I had three run-
ning against me, you know. I
know you had it pretty good.”
“Yeah,” said Hanks. “Well, just
wanted to check on you.”
“We’ll be fine, and Wiley’ll be
fine too,” Harry said, referring to
the sheriff of Decatur County.
“All right,” said Hanks. “If you
need me, holler.”
He hung up and took a moment
to review everything that had
happened. He thought about
what Queen had whispered to
him, and what he knew she and
others had said about him.
“They say, ‘Oh, he’s a g ood ol’
boy.’ I a lways ask, who is the good
ol’ boy? Explain to me, who is the
good ol’ boy? Am I a good ol’ boy?
Am I getting the job because I’m a
good ol’ boy? I think I’m a good
person.”
His phone rang again.
“Harry!” said R. Carlton Pow-
ell, the sheriff of Thomas County,
who was likely to become the
longest-serving sheriff in Geor-
gia.
“How are you doing, my
friend?” Harry said, and they talk-
ed about the runoff.
“Well, I believe you’ll get it,”
Powell said. “I heard ‘ol Wiley
pulled his out, too.”
“Yeah, we’re going to be fine,”
Harry said again. “But I’m telling
you, it was a long night. I got to
thinking about ‘what if.’ Then the
‘if’ never happened. So, I feel
pretty good about it. Fixing to
take two weeks off. Going to Flori-
da. Let things cool off here.”
“Well, be careful,” Powell said.
“People’ll sa y, ‘Oh, Harry thinks
he’s got it made.’”
Harry knew his friend was
right, and when he thought about
the “if,” and the different world
that it contained, he could feel his
dread returning, the premonition
he had always trusted.
“I hear you,” Harry said.
[email protected]Black and White.”
Around 10 p.m., officials came
outside to say there was a glitch
counting the mail-in votes. There
were voting glitches all over Geor-
gia. It was going to be another two
hours before the full results were
known.
“No tellin’ what they’d do if we
left,” said Sonia.
They settled in, and as the eve-
ning went on, the street barri-
cades were removed, and election
night in Grady County distilled
down to two distinct scenes: Theing to calm her.
“How can they vote him back in
that chair?” Montez said, wiping
her eyes. “They all do that good ol’
boy crap .”
“It is what it is,” said Queen,
who saw Duke walking over to
rejoin them. “Don’t let him know
you’re upset,” she told Montez.
Duke stood with his arms fold-
ed.
“You want to give people the
benefit of the doubt on the racial
issue,” he said, shaking his head.
“But everything around here iswas settling in.
“I’m numb,” said Queen.
She and the others stood there
in silence for a while, watching
Harry shake hands, listening to
the little bursts of laughter on the
other side, and Montez Palmer
felt her anger rising.
“Duke worked harder than all
of ’em!” she said. “How can they
vote Harry back in there anyway?
Duke worked harder than all of
’em.”
“There’s going to be a runoff,
baby,” said LaTasha Copeland, try-where he needed to get a decent
share of White votes to have any
hope of winning. Mostly single
digits. He looked away.
“It’s still mathematically possi-
ble,” said Queen. “Not likely, but
possible.”
Duke sighed. He looked at the
pavement. He looked down an
empty street.
“I’m just going to go,” he said.
“Duke, don’t you leave like
this,” Queen said. “Go get yourself
together and come back and
shake their hands. Just take a
deep breath and see it through.”
He retreated to his car to col-
lect himself. Queen walked back
across the street to where Harry
was chatting with a supporter.
“George Soros — it’s been prov-
en,” Harry was saying when
Queen came up to him.
“Hey, Queen,” he said.
“Hey, Harry, how’re you?” she
said, smiling, pulling him in for a
hug, close enough to whisper in
his ear: “If you win this, you better
clean your s--- up, Harry.”
“I’ll try to,” said Harry, but he
was beginning think that the
events of the last few weeks might
have helped rather than hurt him
and that he didn’t have anything
to clean up at all.
His spirits were lightening.
Blowing Cave, Midway, Higdon —
as the night went on, it was be-
coming clear that there would be
a runoff between Harry and Steve
Clark, not the outcome Harry pre-
ferred but hardly the disaster he
had been dreading. He had
missed a clean win by just 19
votes.
Across the street, the realityCounty. His case for the job had
been his 25 years of experience
with the Miami Police Depart-
ment as an officer, an investiga-
tor, and decorated lieutenant. “I
figured I could show people all
my experience and background
and have no problem,” he said.
“That’s what I thought. Didn’t
work out that way.”
In 1998, the first time he ran,
the people of Grady County elect-
ed a former school bus driver
named Snooks Green. In 2012,
the second time he ran, the peo-
ple elected Harry.
“White people won’t vote for a
Black man,” said Odell. “Maybe
they thought I’d be too strict.
Maybe they thought I’d come in
here and do what needs to be
done and they’d wind up with the
short end of the stick.”
He stood under the tent for a
while and watched Duke waving
to voters, wondering if he could
pull it of f.
“You gonna win, Duke?” a man
called out from his car, and Duke
gave a t humbs up.
A young man rode by on a bike.
“Ty!” Duke yelled, and the
young man wheeled around.
“Hey, Duke!” he said.
“What grade you in now?”
Duke asked.
“Eighth,” the young man said.
“All right then,” said Duke,
smiling and waving, and after
the polls closed, he headed over
to the newspaper to see the re-
sults.H
arry was already there,
opening his shirt collar one
more button. It was hot,
and he could feel his old sense of
dread rising. Police had blocked
off the street in front of the Cairo
Messenger, and by 8 p.m. all the
local candidates and their sup-
porters had arrived, some unfold-
ing lawn chairs, anticipating a
long night. On the window of the
newspaper building, an official
taped up a chart with rows of
empty boxes where vote totals
from nine precincts would soon
be filled in. Harry drifted between
clusters of people, avoiding the
usual chatter, finally standing off
to the side by himself. He checked
his phone.
“I’m worried about you,” his
daughter texted him from Flori-
da.
A police officer walked over.
“Hey, Harry, how’re you do-
ing?” he said.
Harry nodded and went back to
his phone.
Across the street, Duke and his
supporters watched the scene.
“Look at him over there,”
Queen said, shaking her head.
Soon, the door of the Messen-
ger opened, and people began
gathering at the chart.
Harry walked over, and Queen
crossed the street, and now they
were shoulder to shoulder as an
official began filling in the first
batch of results.
“Duke won the Ag,” someone
said into the quiet, reading the
numbers from the agriculture
ce nter: Harry, 63. Duke, 65. A
third candidate, a former sheriff’s
deputy named Steve Clark,
viewed by many as a younger
version of Harry, g ot 62.
The of ficial moved on to Cairo
4, the precinct by Martin Luther
King Jr. Ave: Harry, 15. Duke, 96.
Then came the rest.
A rural precinct called Spence:
Harry, 6 7. Duke, 3. Clark, 67.
A rural precinct called Wood-
land: Harry 99, Duke 29, Clark
153.
The early votes: Harry, 371.
Duke, 50. Clark, 300.
Harry’s phone started ringing.
“Hey, buddy,” Harry said,
brightening. “Yeah, they’re start-
ing to put them up. I got Spence
and Woodland. Yeah. Well, we’ll
see.”
People began patting Harry’s
back and shaking Harry’s hand.
“Good to see you, brother,” one
man said.
“Hey, Harry, how you do?” an-
other asked.
Across the street, Queen
showed Duke the numbers she
had written down in a notebook.
In past elections, more than a
thousand people had voted at the
precinct by Martin Luther King,
Jr. Ave.; the total this time was
fewer than 150.
“They didn’t show up,” Duke
said.
He looked at the rural precinctsPHOTOS BY MARK WALLHEISER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
T OP: Harry sits outside a polling location in Cairo, Ga. ABOVE: Duke and some of his supporters watch as new results are posted.Candidates and supporters continue to wait past midnight for absentee ballots to be counted.BY DAN LAMOTHEA retired Army general whose
controversial nomination for a
senior civilian position at the
Pentagon was put on hold last
week has withdrawn from con-
sideration and will instead take
an appointment that does not
require Senate approval.
Anthony J. Tata withdrew his
name from consideration for
undersecretary of defense for
policy, after the Senate Armed
Services Committee canceled his
confirmation hearing on Thurs-day amid signs that he did not
have enough votes to be con-
firmed. He instead has been
tapped as the official performing
the duties of the deputy under-
secretary of defense for policy, a
temporary position that does
not require Senate confirmation.
“He looks forward to continu-
ing to help implement the Presi-
dent’s National Security agen-
da,” the Pentagon said in a
statement Sunday confirming
the appointment.
Tata’s nomination was contro-
versial following statements hemade that included calling for-
mer president Barack Obama a
“terrorist leader,” suggesting
that former CIA director John
Brennan should prepare for exe-
cution or suck “on a pistol,” and
saying that Islam is the “most
oppressive violent religion I
know of.” His comments that
came under scrutiny included
both tweets and things he said as
a national security analyst in
int erviews.
Tata retired as a brigadier
general in 2009 under a cloud
after the Army inspector generalfound that he had at least two
extramarital affairs, despite
adultery being a crime in the
military.
President Trump had pressed
Senate Republicans to hold a
hearing for Tata, 60, who fre-
quently appeared on conserva-
tive media outlets as an analyst.
But some senators — including
those facing reelection this fall
— raised concerns about him as
the hearing closed in.
Under the Federal Vacancies
Reform Act, once a person is
nominated to fill a position on apermanent basis, the president
may not appoint him or her to
fill that same position on a
temporary basis. In Tata’s case,
his new position falls just below
the undersecretary position for
which he originally was nomi-
nated.
The disclosure of Tata’s new
position brought an immediate
condemnation from Rep. Adam
Smith (D-Wash.), the chairman
of the House Armed Services
Committee.
“If an appointee cannot gain
the support of the Senate, as isclearly the case with Tata, then
the president should not put
that person into an identical
temporary role,” Smith said.
“This evasion of scrutiny makes
our government less account-
able and prioritizes loyalty over
competence.”
Smith added that vacant posi-
tions in the Defense Department
have hit a record high under
Trump, limiting the Pentagon’s
ability to fulfill its duties and
missions, and posing a “threat to
our national security.”
[email protected]Retired Army general to take Pentagon job not subject to S enate approval