Hilton Head mayor: Orischak and Perry appear headed to a runoff election

Hilton Head Island will hold a second consecutive mayoral runoff election as JoAnn Orischak held a slim 400-vote lead over Alan Perry early Wednesday morning, but neither got the required 50% of the vote.

With 100% of precincts reporting, Orischak maintained her lead since early voting results came in around 8 p.m. Tuesday evening. The margin shrunk, however, when the votes were released, with Orischak holding 44.24% of votes and Perry 41.34%.

According to scvotes.gov, here is the breakdown:

JoAnn Orischak: 6,957

Alan Perry: 6,500

Michael Santomauro: 859

Orischak said she would study Hilton Head’s precincts in advance of the runoff election and further prepare.

Perry said, “We will be prepared to proceed with the runoff election.”

One factor that may have contributed to neither of the two main candidates getting 50% of the vote is that a former candidate, Thomas J. Cleary III, was still on the ballot, despite dropping out on Oct. 3. He pulled in 1,334 votes, or 8.48%.

Cleary attended Orischak’s watch party Tuesday night.

A 20-year island resident, Orischak is no stranger to electoral success. She’s previously run two campaigns for Beaufort County School Board in 2012 and 2016, winning each time. She ran uncontested in 2016.

Orischak garnered a reputation as a proponent for transparency and government accountability during her school board tenure, and she’s made similar promises to correct public mistrust that she says “permeates” local government, should she be elected.

Perry is a long-time island resident who first moved to Hilton Head in 1972. He is a senior loan officer for Mortgage Network and currently serves on the town planning commission as vice chair.

In 2018, Perry received around 22% of votes cast.

Perry and Orischak’s campaigns saw little contention between the candidates, although there was still controversy. Orischak claimed in an ongoing lawsuit against Hilton Head Plantation general manager Peter Kristian that Kristian asked residents report some of her campaign mailers to the USPS as potential federal law violations may have been motivated by he and Perry’s relationship.

The campaign was also significantly cheaper than the 2018 race, which saw all candidates combined raise almost $150,000, according to the state ethics commission website. Orischak and Perry combined raised around $10,000 at the time of their last campaign finance report filings.

Santomauro, the second returning candidate from 2018 alongside Perry, also chose not to raise money for his campaign this election cycle. In 2018, Santomauro earned just under 2% of the vote.

This story was originally published November 8, 2022 at 12:00 AM.

Blake Douglas

The Island Packet

Blake is the Hilton Head Island reporter for the Island Packet. A Tulsa, Oklahoma native, Blake has written for his hometown Tulsa World, as well as the Charlotte Observer. He graduated in May 2022 from the University of Oklahoma with a journalism degree.