Cooke County — Tuesday’s unofficial early voting results from two Cooke County runoff races suggested new names for sheriff and District 68 representative.

County sheriff candidate Terry Gilbert took 1,195 early votes against the 726 accorded to opponent Jim Carter, earning 62 percent of the approval. And District 68 candidate Drew Springer garnered 1,582 early Cooke County votes against the 333 given to opponent Trent McKnight, earning 83 percent.

Election day votes tallied at 1,930, but Deputy County Clerk Cindy Walterscheid said those unofficial voting results would not be available for publication late Tuesday despite a delayed press time. A more definitive list of results should be available today at www.gainesvilleregister.com.

But three of the candidates, all Republican contenders, discussed their campaigns earlier in the afternoon.

Gilbert’s possible victory as sheriff would remove him from his current job as constable of the county’s Precinct 1 and land him in a seat currently occupied by Mike Compton.

This is despite the fact that Carter, his opponent, has already served the department as a deputy since 1997.

“I most certainly want to thank my family and friends and supporters who helped me,” Gilbert said Tuesday afternoon. “I couldn’t have done it without them. And I want to thank my opponent for working a good race and a clean race. I look forward to January 1, where we can take office and go to work.”

Carter said Tuesday afternoon that if he wasn’t voted into the sheriff’s chair later in the day, a leave of office has been planned alongside active sheriff Compton.

“It’s not the end of the world,” he said. “I’ve had a fantastic career at the sheriff’s office, and I will probably be retiring on Jan. 31, with Mike. And I’ll just go forward and enjoy life.”

And since the beginning of his campaign to become sheriff, Gilbert has been critical of the Cooke County Sheriff’s Department —  more of how it operates alongside the public rather than how it deals with crime. He said Tuesday that if elected, he would focus on improving this perceived flaw.

“The first thing that we’ll work on is public relations, our image to the public,” he said. “I want to improve the image that the sheriff’s office has with the people of Cooke County.”

Gilbert said he felt that overall, the Cooke County sheriff’s department could stand to be “more accessible” and “more polite.” He added that developing graciousness in a department that exists to deal with unpleasant elements may seem like a complex task, but is crucial.

“Yes, it’s all about catching bad guys and putting them in jail and protecting the public,” he said. “But we want public input. We want the people to help us do our job and we need to improve our public relations to make that happen.”

Carter said Tuesday that he has been appreciative of the long-term support. If he does remain in office and become sheriff, he admitted he would help his agency operate much as it already has.

“I promise to all the citizens of Cooke County an up-to-date and progressive sheriff’s department, just as I’ve promised throughout my campaign, and we’ll go from there,” he said, adding that his campaign never included promise of any major changes. “I think it’s going to be pretty much the same. It’s been progressive since Mike took office in 1997, and we’ll continue that. People are, overall, satisfied. Change is not necessarily for the better, as we’ve seen in Washington.”

The District 68 runoff race between McKnight and Springer pitted a 32-year-old Throckmorton cattle rancher against an older Muenster livestock businessman, both of them with strong promises to improve the 22-county district.

McKnight, who has called himself a “common sense conservative,” was unavailable at press time. But during several candidate forums in recent months, he foresees three issues during the next legislative session that will impact the district: water resources, school finance and rural development.

“We don’t want to be urban or suburban in Cooke County,” he said. “We want to make sure that our community thrives. I want to preserve rural economy and value.”

McKnight also said he would continue the momentum of the region’s oil-and-gas-based energy sector and would champion the district’s relatively small schools.

“We must make sure that rural schools have a seat at the table,” he said. “I understand the issues that rural schools face. We must stop the unfunded mandates that are coming out of Austin that are putting an onerous burden on teachers and school administrators and forcing them to spend more time in bureaucracy than they are teaching in the classrooms.”

During the same forums, Springer touched on several points. One emphasis was the importance of the state’s agriculture trade.

“Agriculture is very strong,” Springer said. “It’s more than 10 percent of the Texas economy. We have to defend it, we have to support it and we have to protect our rural way of life.”

He said if elected, he would lobby against illegal immigration — a federal issue, but one that affects the state’s education and healthcare industries — and would work to put more vocational education in Texas schools and produce more local skilled laborers.

Springer, who also said during forums that he has had up to 1,000 employees working for him at once, also promised he would strive to prevent governmental over regulation in industry.