TYLER, Texas — An extended and heated runoff was not enough to stop Josh Joplin from winning another four years as Constable of Precinct Four in Smith County.
Joplin defeated Curtis Wulf by 90 votes for a margin of 52.77% to 47.23% during the Republican Primary Runoff.
According to Smith County, at least 1,626 votes were cast in the race. Joplin said that when he was involved in a runoff in 2016, only 600 votes were cast.
“When you move a runoff to July, the thing is, everybody’s kind of vacationing, everybody’s out, it’s warm,” he said Tuesday afternoon. “We’re out here sweating. But, at the end of the day, the voters are coming in, they’re coming in in droves.”
Joplin said his biggest accomplishment during his first four years as constable was to hire additional deputies to cover evening and weekend shifts and adding a K-9 deputy for education and drug interdiction. “I took an office that was light on the patrol side and we made it better,” he said.
Joplin said expanding even further would be his priority for a second term, though he acknowledged that the county’s budget might not allow for it due to the impact of coronavirus on the tax base.
“If we can save taxpayer dollars and continue what I’ve already built, to continue doing what we’re doing for the precinct, I’ll do that,” he said. “But, if they see fit that it’s in the budget that we can add, then, certainly, I would love to add more for the safety and protection of the people of Precinct Four.”
Wulf campaigned on a promise to improve the relationship between the Constable’s Office and the Smith County Sheriff’s Office. Joplin mentioned that he does not have the closest relationship with Smith County Sheriff Larry Smith but said that does not have any impact on his ability to do his job.
“I work well with the deputies and all the guys that are working the street," he said. "At the end of the day, the guys out here in the uniforms are the ones that are actually out here doing the work. We back them up every day, their dispatch asks us to help them. We never shy away from taking a call or helping them out.”
He said voters told him they were not interested in the relationship between elected officials. “The main thing that they care about,” he claimed, “is having representation for their precinct, having law enforcement that’s visible, trustworthy, and somebody who actually knows the people and knows the community, and is invested in the community.”
Joplin is now the presumptive Constable-elect because no Democrats entered the race to run against him.