Jonathan McCollar, with at least 69% of the votes to not quite 31% for challenger Raymond Harris in the election that ended Tuesday, secured a third term as mayor of Statesboro. Meanwhile, substantial majorities of Bulloch County voters said “yes” to two sales tax questions.
The vote counts given here, from about 9:45 p.m. Tuesday, reflect all of the Election Day and early in-person voting. But at that time, because of a problem with the “adjudication” software that election officials use to decide dubious marks on hand-marked paper ballots, none of Bulloch County’s exactly 130 absentee ballots had been added to the tallies. However, those 130 would not be enough to change the outcome for any candidate or ballot question.
Overall turnout was modest, with 9,329 ballots cast throughout Bulloch County early, absentee and on Election Day, or 17.4% of the county’s 53,740 registered voters. But it was a regular election only for Statesboro’s city contests, since this is an odd-numbered, municipal election year. For residents of the county outside Statesboro, the only choices on the ballot other than “yes” and “no’ on the sales tax referendums were between the candidates for two Georgia Public Service Commission, or PSC, seats.
However, Statesboro had the mayoral race open to voters citywide, plus, just in Council District 1, a rematch between a incumbent Councilmember Tangie Reese Johnson and challenger John Grotheer.
The numerical count in the mayor’s race (not including any absentee ballots) was 1,819 votes for McCollar to 794 votes for Harris. Of the 130 countywide absentee ballots yet to be tallied, just 46 were from voters in the city of Statesboro, according to a breakout provided by county Election Supervisor Shontay Jones.
“I think the city of Statesboro has spoken about the future that they want,” Mayor McCollar said when phoned about the results. “I think the city of Statesboro has said that they want a future where the people work together, where we lift all of each other up when we go through difficult times, and I think the city of Statesboro said that it’s tired of the negativity and the divisiveness and they want to be a part of a community where we work together to continue to make our community better.”
Asserting “People Over Politics” as his perennial campaign slogan, McCollar was first elected in 2017, capturing almost 53% of the votes in a three-candidate race to unseat previous Mayor Jan Moore. In 2021, McCollar was re-elected with almost 85% of the vote over a challenger.
Harris, a first-time candidate in this election, campaigned to “cut wasteful spending and never raise taxes.” A U.S. Army veteran who served in Bosnia and was injured before being honorably discharged in 1998, he had later worked in information technology for civilian companies and was briefly a Bulloch County Sheriff’s Office jailer.
“Well, people, they want him for another term, so that’s what it is. …,” Harris said Tuesday night. “We had a lot good supporters come out, and I really appreciate the support and the prayers and the people coming out to vote. We thought it would be a little closer … but you live and your learn.”
One week before Election Day, postings appeared on social media – and an anonymous letter arrived at the Statesboro Herald – revealing that Harris had been charged with three counts of aggravated child molestation and one count of statutory rape nearly 20 years ago in Clayton County. But as documents and the candidate himself revealed, a judge had dismissed one of the charges through a directed verdict and a jury found Harris not-guilty of all of the other charges.
Some of the social media posts highlighted the charges without noting the acquittals, and Harris called this “dirty politics.” McCollar said the posting did not originate with his campaign team and also lamented that the 2025 mayoral race had “started out dark and mean spirited” and involved verbal attacks on his wife and others on his side in the contest.
FLOST & E-SPLOST
Meanwhile, whatever campaigning may have taken place in regard to the sales tax referendums must have occurred fairly quietly.
The FLOST, or Floating Local Option Sales Tax, will be a new 1% sales tax, now authorized to be collected for five years beginning in January. Its revenue will go into a special fund to be used by the Bulloch County government and the municipalities of Statesboro, Brooklet, Portal and Register for a proportional rollback of their property tax rates.
Countywide, 6,509 voters, or 71.7%, said “yes” to FLOST, while 2,570 other citizens voted “no.”
The addition of FLOST will bring the total of sales taxes in Bulloch County to 9% on non-exempt items. This also includes Georgia’s 4% state sales tax and, in Bulloch, the original Local Option Sales Tax; the multipurpose Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or SPLOST; the Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or T-SPLOST; and the Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or E-SPLOST.
A current five-year installment of E-SPLOST, approved by a large majority of Bulloch voters in November 2022, is set to continue until Sept. 30, 2028. What was approved by voters Tuesday and in the early voting was a sixth, five-year installment of E-SPLOST, to run from Oct. 1, 2028 until Sept. 30, 2033 or until a $175 million revenue cap is reached. It is expected to fund completion of the planned new Southeast Bulloch High School, plus annual “capital” purchases of things such as school buses, instructional materials and technology infrastructure, and potentially other renovation and construction projects
As of Tuesday’s unofficial count, 6,076 voters, or 66.6% of those who voted early in-person or on Election Day, vote “yes” in this Bulloch County “E-SPLOST 6” referendum, while 2,570 voted “no.”
Council District 1
Meanwhile, in Statesboro Council District 1, Councilmember Tangie Johnson garnered a full four-year term, with 616 votes, or 71%, to 249 votes for John Grotheer. They had been two of the three candidates in last year’s special election in which Johnson was elected to serve the remainder, through 2025, of the unexpired term of former member Phil Boyum.