Gordon Ramsay

K. Meinecke

REGIONAL- Former Duluth Police Chief Gordon Ramsay won the St. Louis County Sheriff’s race on Tuesday by handily winning Duluth and narrowly edging current undersheriff Jason Lukovsky in the rest of the county.
Ramsay followed up on his August primary victory by capturing a countywide total of 42,741 votes, or 49.8 percent, to 34,538 votes for Lukovsky, or 40.3 percent.
Duluth was expected to go to native son Ramsay, who served as police chief there for a decade before taking a similar position in Wichita, Kan. in 2016. Ramsay won all but one of the city’s 33 precincts while piling up a 6,500-vote advantage over Lukovsky, 19,874-13,338.
That advantage grew when Ramsay outpolled Lukovsky outside of Duluth as well. While the race in the wider county was much closer, Ramsay picked up 22,867 votes to Lukovsky’s 21,200.
A wild card in this race was the write-in bid of former candidate Chad Walsh, who was eliminated in the August primary but continued to actively campaign for the job. Write-ins captured 9.9 percent of the ballots cast on Tuesday, 8,519 votes that for the most part surely went to Walsh instead of the other two candidates. Write-ins were the winner in Embarrass Township.
Walsh won 66 county precincts in the August primary, and how those precincts split on Tuesday was another indicator of Ramsay’s countywide appeal. Ramsay won 49 of the precincts that formerly went to Walsh while Lukovsky picked up just 17.