News-Record.com

County government reporter Mark Binker and I walked up to the old Guilford County Courthouse about 7:30 p.m. The polls were supposed to close then, but due to the overwhelming turnout, many folks still were waiting in line at 7:30. They were allowed to vote, and rightfully so. But that meant a rough night for us reporters trying to beat a deadline.

The News & Record has three editions: one for our Rockingham County readers, a second for High Point and a third for Greensboro. I had to have a story turned in by 8:45 p.m. for the Rockingham County edition.

Normally, that wouldn't be a problem, but with the delays, it meant we literally had no results to report by the first deadline. I cobbled together a quick story explaining the delays and e-mailed back to the office.

I had until 10:30 p.m. to get a story for High Point and when the returns started rolling in about 9 p.m., I figured I was in good shape. But the flow of returns slowed to a trickle and by the time the High Point deadline came, 20 percent of the votes were still out.

The big story for most of the night was that Dot Kearns' tenure on the school board appeared to be in jeopardy. Kearns has been a school board member since its formation in 1992 and has been a local elected official for 32 of the past 34 years. But former Greensboro City Council member and county commissioner Jim Kirkpatrick led the at-large school board race most of the night.

But just as I was about to file my story for the High Point version - a story that said, "Kirkpatrick held a slim lead over Kearns" - something happened. For the first time all evening, Kearns was in the lead by about 100 votes. I quickly rewrote the top sentence of my story and sent it in to the office right at the 10:30 p.m. deadline.

By that point, the other three races were pretty well wrapped up. Amos Quick had an insurmountable lead in District 9 and Walter Childs and Kris Cooke were well on their way to winning Districts 1 and 7 respectively.

I had another hour before I had to file my Greensboro story and, thankfully, all the returns came in by then.

Many of the late ballots came from south and central High Point - rock-solid Kearns territory - and she held on for a tough win. But talk about political drama: the Kearns Kirkpatrick race was the political equivalent of the recently-completed Red Sox-Yankees series on the nailbiter scale.

Once the votes were in, I quickly interviewed the candidates, some by phone, some there at the courthouse, and filed my story. After making sure everything was squared away back at the office, I went home and turned on the TV, hoping (unsuccessfully, it turned out) to find out who the president was before I drifted off to sleep.