Longtime Lake Charles City Court Judge John Hood clung to his Division B seat in Saturday’s runoff while Jamie Bice won the runoff to fill outgoing Division A Judge Tommy Quirk’s seat.

More than 24,000 votes were cast in the race for City Court, but it came down to 125 votes between Hood and challenger Ron Richard.

Hood received 12,361 votes, or 50.25 percent, and Richard received 12,236 votes, or 49.75, percent, according to complete but unofficial results from the secretary of state.

Bice received 14,920 votes, or 60 percent, and Rob McCorquodale received 9,991 votes, or 40 percent.

Hood said he did not expect the race to come down to so few votes.

“We haven’t analyzed it yet and broken down the precincts,” said

Hood, who has served in court for 30 years. “I’m just thankful for all the people that did stand by me and gave me this chance to serve six more years.”

In the Nov. 4 election, Hood received 47 percent of the vote, Richard got 38 percent and Bryan Gill got 15 percent.

Bice and McCorquodale ended up in a runoff after a close Nov. 4 election, in which Bice received 38 percent of the vote, McCorquodale received 36 percent and Brent Hawkins got 25 percent.

“I’m from Lake Charles; I have friends in every neighborhood in Lake Charles,” Bice said.

“In every precinct, I’ve represented people and you’ve got to be the judge for everybody. We worked hard to make sure that we campaigned everywhere, and I think that it showed.”(MGNonline)