‘It’s heartfelt’: Beaufort County sheriff talks winning and the next steps following election
Before any election results trickled in late Tuesday night and into the morning, Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner only had word of mouth to rely on for his reelection, which was frustrating, he said.
“There always seems to be a bump in the road, some kind of glitch, that keeps numbers from showing what everyone would like to see in a timely fashion,” Tanner said Tuesday night at a watch party at the Salty Dog in Bluffton. “Here it is, 9:45, and I haven’t seen any numbers. I’m getting reports from the GOP that things look good for me, but I’m one of those people I like to see fact.”
The fact is, Tanner defeated his GOP challenger, Joey “JoJo’ Woodward Jr. with 11,465 votes, or 61%, to 7,190 votes, or 39%, for Woodward. The two faced each other in 2018, when Tanner captured 55% of the vote, according to the Beaufort County Board of Registration and Elections.
“There were so many members of the sheriff’s office that were a large part of this process in their off time,” said Tanner, who has been sheriff since 1998. “I tell you what, it is heartfelt and refreshing to know that we have the men and women at the sheriff’s office who feel the way they do about the job they do ... for the citizens we serve.”
Of the 135,660 registered voters in the county, only 25,173 ballots were cast, meaning that there was an 18.65% voter turnout.
“I think there’s a lot of anticipation about what do these numbers represent,” Tanner said.
What’s next?
As of Wednesday afternoon, precincts on Hilton Head had not yet been tabulated. A redistricting error in Beaufort County caused a delay in reporting.
Since March, when Woodward announced his second campaign to unseat Tanner as acting sheriff, the two have shared their opposing views on how the agency should be run and the state of crime in the county. Tanner said crime rates are below the national average and numbers from the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System, which is reported voluntarily by the sheriff’s office, show that violent crime has been on the decline in the last several years.
Woodward maintains his stance that crime is on the rise and previously told the Island Packet that he does not believe those numbers.
Woodward is a former captain in the Sheriff’s Office and investigator for the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office. When reached by phone Wednesday, Woodward said he wished more people had gone out and voted and hoped Tanner was listening to concerns about morale in the sheriff’s office and what was said about crime rates.
“We are just going to move forward, have a positive attitude,” Woodward said. “Hopefully something good comes out of this and we’re going to have to keep an eye on what’s going on at the sheriff’s office.”
When asked if he planned to run again, he said it was a possibility, but that he did not know as of yet. Beaufort County “has not seen the last of JoJo Woodward,” he added.
In preparation for his win, Tanner said he would be implementing changes to address school violence and a recent rash of shootings in Beaufort County by using historical data of what has worked before.
“Everything we do is by design; there’s no knee-jerk reaction to anything we do,” Tanner said. “It’s well thought out, it’s well-planned.”
In the wake of a tragic mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last month, the sheriff’s office and Beaufort County’s school superintendent Frank Rodriguez along with its other law enforcement leaders — including chiefs from the Bluffton, Port Royal and Beaufort police departments — met to discuss school safety. The key to achieving safer schools, Tanner said, was to “learn more about what happened in Texas.”
“We can’t just sit here and say, ‘What we’re going to do because of what happened in Texas is we’re going to put deputy sheriff’s at every entry point and wand kids,’” he said. “Let’s wait and see what exactly took place in Texas and try to help us figure out what we need to do in South Carolina to make South Carolina schools safer.”
In the future, the sheriff’s office looks forward to offering retired first responders, military and law enforcement the chance to possibly join the sheriff’s office as school resource officers, Tanner said.
“I’ve challenged my training staff to come up with a training syllabus just for a school resource officer,” he said. “It’s six weeks, we could do it all here in Beaufort. It’s a value we’ve never had before.”
The next step would be to submit the syllabus and corresponding instruction to the South Carolina training council and, if approved, school resource officer training would be held locally.
Winning the primary election does not mean Sheriff Tanner could run unopposed in the November general election. Someone could still run as a write-in candidate.
This story was originally published June 15, 2022 at 2:04 PM.
