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By NOAH WORTHAM | Managing Editor

Incumbent Elwyn Bearden was reelected to the Shelby County Commission’s District 5 seat on Tuesday. Nov. 5 with nearly 70 percent of the vote.

Bearden, of Helena, was reelected to a four year term with an unofficial tally of 9,677 votes out of 13,874. Bearden ran in the general election as a Republican and faced Democrat candidate Leslie Tyus who received 4,188 votes or 30.19 percent of the vote.

“It (the results) makes me feel really positive,” Bearden said. “if you’ve done things they don’t like, it’s going to show up on election day, but we’ve got a good group on our County Commission and we’ve been together for a number of years now. We think we’ve improved things in our county and we’re trying improve them some more.”

Bearden was first appointed to the District 5 commission seat in 2012 to fill the vacancy left by former commissioner Joel Bearden, who was his uncle.

“I had no intention of being in politics ever in my life, but after my uncle died, I had some people that came to me and asked if I would consider throwing my name in the arena there for his spot,” Bearden said.

Bearden has successfully been reelected each term since. He also previously served a period of time as the chairperson of the Shelby County Commission after being appointed in 2019.

As he enters into his fourth term with the Commission, Bearden is focused on a variety of infrastructural improvements to the Shelby County. He wishes to continue working on highways and make traffic signal improvements as well as ensure the county has the best water in the state.

“Those are not very beautiful things to talk about, but (they are) things that we’re tasked to do in the county, and so far, we’ve been able to a fairly good job at it and we’ll keep improving it,” Bearden said.

Bearden also credited part of the Commission’s success to the high quality workers the county has employed.

“We have good people working for us in the county,” Bearden said. “That’s more important probably than who is on the County Commission.”