In mayor’s race, Hilton Head Plantation voters flipped their support to Perry. What changed?
A day after the Nov. 8 general election, mayoral candidate Alan Perry said one of his campaign’s priorities for the runoff election would be winning his home neighborhood — Hilton Head Plantation.
On Tuesday night, that focus paid off for Perry, who comfortably won the race for Hilton Head mayor by more than 1,000 votes.
In fact, Perry swept all eight precincts in Hilton Head Plantation in the runoff election, compared with taking just three in the general election. The tight 81-vote lead Orischak held on Nov. 8 gave way to a Perry victory.
With about 10,000 residents, Hilton Head Plantation is the largest gated community on the island. Since it prohibits short-term rentals, many of its residents live on Hilton Head year-round. In the runoff election, the neighborhood accounted for 2,688 of 8,610 votes cast, roughly a third of all ballots.
The impact of winning the Plantation precincts is apparent at a glance. In the runoff, Perry defeated Orischak by a total of 1,040 votes across all 26 island precincts. Much of that margin came from Hilton Head Plantation’s precincts, where Perry beat his opponent by 744 votes.
Orischak received 972 votes total in HHP precincts Tuesday, trailing Perry’s 1,716. In the general election, Orischak secured 2,001 votes from Plantation voters.
Perry earned a late endorsement from outgoing Mayor John McCann on Nov. 16. In McCann’s 2018 mayoral win, he claimed seven of the Plantation’s eight precincts.
What caused the shift?
Hilton Head Plantation came into focus even before the Nov. 8 election when Orischak filed a still-pending lawsuit against the neighborhood’s property owners’ association and General Manager Peter Kristian.
The lawsuit stemmed from an email Kristian sent after residents informed him of Orischak campaign mailers lacking verification they’d been paid for appearing in their mailboxes. Kristian sent a mass email to the community alerting them of the potential federal law violation, but didn’t mentioned Orischak by name.
Orischak later provided a receipt showing the mailers were paid for, and the oversight was made by local Post Office employees who inspected and distributed the materials, even though they lacked the necessary stamps. Kristian then sent another mass email to inform residents the mail was legally distributed, but by then, as Orischak’s lawsuit claimed, “reputational damages” were already done by the initial email.
Some Orischak voters said the decision to sue cost her the support of Plantation voters.
“It was probably the major, No. 1 thing (that led to Orischak losing HHP) because I know on NextDoor, a lot of people from Hilton Head Plantation — and even outside — said, ‘I voted for JoAnn the first time, I’m not voting for her now,’” resident William Rose said. “I saw others say they were worried that she was ‘lawsuit happy.’”
One NextDoor poster, Raymond Crickenberger, wrote he’d originally voted for Orischak but flipped his vote due to the HHP lawsuit.
“I voted for her in (the) previous election, but her actions have changed my mind,” Crickenberger wrote. “I will now vote for Alan.”
Orischak filed her lawsuit after early voting had ended for the Nov. 8 election, which she won. In the runoff election, however, Perry won the early voting period.
‘Machine’ politics
On Wednesday, reflecting on the outcome of the runoff election, Orischak didn’t feel the lawsuit was the primary cause for her slip in the polls.
“I don’t want to focus too much on Hilton Head Plantation — yes, it’s the biggest voting bloc on the island, and, yes, it’s Mr. Perry’s community,” Orischak said, “(but) there were a number of other factors which led to my demise, not the least of which was low voter turnout and the emergence of ‘the machine’ down the stretch.”
The runoff saw 8,610 votes cast out of 31,809 registered voters in Hilton Head’s 26 precincts — a 27% turnout. That was down slightly from around 29% seen in the 2018 mayoral runoff.
Although she admitted the lawsuit may have impacted the vote, Orischak said she still feels it was the right decision.
“Perhaps it did have an outcome on the voting, but that shouldn’t be my primary motivation, getting votes,” Orischak said. “My primary motivation is doing the right thing ... accusations of violating federal law, the highest law in the land, is what elevated that to a formal complaint.”
Orischak, a former Beaufort County School Board member, also said she wasn’t running her campaign with the “same ammunition” as Perry in the fundraising realm. Her decision not to accept donations or campaign support from larger political groups, she said, may have contributed to her lagging in the runoff.
Her reference to “the machine,” she said, was in part acknowledging groups like the local Realtors’ association publishing text messages in support of Perry’s campaign.
Orischak emphasized that she understood Perry’s campaign style was fair play and simply different from her own.
“I don’t know that I’d do anything different, to be honest with you,” Orischak said Wednesday. “I ran my campaign with integrity, by my own rules, my own standards, and my own fundraising guidelines.”
‘The people spoke today’
Perry could not be immediately reached for comment Wednesday.
On Tuesday night, after all the votes were in, he said, “I think (the victory) is about the call to action from the community and that they see value in having me as mayor. I appreciate the other side and their standpoints, and it’s obviously something we’re going to address going forward. ... The people spoke today, I appreciate their direction, and look forward to serving them and everyone in my best capacity.”
Orischak, Perry and island voters all agreed the campaign became “dirty” in the runoff period, with both sides’ supporters taking jabs on social media. Many comments focused on Orischak’s lawsuit against Hilton Head Plantation, with one post from Perry’s social media making a point that he “would not sue (island residents).”
Former County Councilman Steve Baer published several emails and social media posts in support of Orischak which doubted Perry’s ability to act independently of Realtors or other influential groups on the island if he remains in his career as senior loan officer for Mortgage Network.
Resident Christopher Ames said he was surprised the race took a more nasty tone, especially online.
“It did surprise me because it happened here,” Ames said after voting in the runoff election. “I thought maybe we would be a bit more civilized with everything else going on, but, technically, I guess I wasn’t too surprised ... I guess we’re all human.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2022 at 5:01 PM.
