Richland County voters to cast ballots in county council race Tuesday
Richland County voters will head to the polls Tuesday to vote in a special Democratic primary for the seat formerly held by Chip Jackson who died in August.
Angela Gary Addison, Jonnieka Farr, Jesica Mackey and Cody Pressley will face off during Tuesday’s primary. The winner will likely take the District 9 seat come November because no Republican has registered to run in that race, according to the State Election Commission’s website.
Elected to the seat in 2016, Jackson sought reelection this year and won his primary in June, but died in early August. Before serving his term on the Richland County Council, he was on the Richland 2 school board for eight years. He was 65 at the time of his death.
District 9 encompasses the Pontiac area in northeastern Richland County.
Farr works as a business analyst for the S.C. Department of Social Services. She’s also a board member for the Greater Columbia Community Relations Council.
If elected, she said the three most important issues for her would be improving roads and infrastructure, helping small businesses and focusing on community engagement.
“Increasing broadband and WiFi access to Richland County residents should also be a top priority,” she wrote in a questionnaire from The State.
Mackey is a senior project advisor at NP Strategy, a public relations firm.
For her, the race for the District 9 seat is in part about improving local infrastructure for the area. Mackey said that the district is growing fast, and improvements need to be made to handle the influx of new residents.
Mackey also pushed for transparency in the county’s penny tax roads program and better management of the program’s funds.
She also pushed for residents to have more access to county leaders.
Pressley works in real estate and is a veteran. The State could not reach him for comment Monday, but on his campaign website, he said he was focused on public safety, economic development and transparency.
One of his proposals includes “building a bridge between law enforcement and the community.”
Addison, who works for a health care provider and is the founder of a youth nonprofit, according to the (Columbia) Free Times, was not immediately available Monday.
This story was originally published September 7, 2020 at 12:23 PM.
