Franklin County voters casting Republican ballots Tuesday went against the grain in several statewide races.
Locally, John Brunner edged Todd Akin, the winner of the race.
In Franklin County, 4,800 people voted for Brunner, or 35.55 percent, with 4,770 voting for Akin and 3,286 voting for Sarah Steelman.
Statewide, Akin received 217,404 votes, or 36 percent, beating out Brunner’s 180,788 votes, or 30 percent, and Steelman’s 176,127 votes, or 29.2 percent.
Akin will face incumbent Democrat U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill in November.
In Franklin County, voters also picked the loser in the Republican race for secretary of state.
Here, Scott Rupp got 4,955 votes, or 41.32 percent, over Shane Schoeller’s 4,749 votes.
Schoeller won the statewide race though, with 193,145 votes to Rupp’s 188,636 — a margin of victory of only 0.8 percent.
Democrats here and statewide picked Jason Kander to face Schoeller.
In all of the other contested statewide primaries, the largest block of Franklin County voters picked the same candidates as the rest of the state.
Democrats overwhelmingly chose incumbent Gov. Jay Nixon Tuesday.
Nixon received 2,645 votes, or 86.7 percent, of the Democratic ballots cast in Franklin County and 86 percent of the 313,814 cast statewide.
Dave Spence was picked by Republicans to challenge Nixon.
Locally Spence received 7,688 votes, or 60.8 percent. At the state level he received about 60 percent of the vote.
Here and across the state Democrats picked Susan Montee as their candidate to challenge incumbent Republican Peter Kinder, who fended off several challengers, for lieutenant governor.
Montee got 1,179 votes, or 41 percent, in Franklin County and about 45 percent in the state.
Kinder got 6,322 votes, or 49.2 percent, in the county. He won by a smaller margin overall, receiving 44.2 percent to Brad Lager’s 41.6 percent.
Republican voters here and across the state also picked the same candidate for attorney general — Ed Martin. Martin received 71.6 percent of the state vote and 75.2 percent of the vote in Franklin County to beat out fellow Republican Adam Lee Warren.
Locally voters were slightly stronger in their support of Amendment 2, the “right to pray” amendment, with 14,334 voters, 84.1 percent, in favor in Franklin County versus 2,709 against.
Statewide the issue passed with 82.8 percent or the 942,541 votes cast.
