GOSHEN — It was a nail-biting finish in the Elkhart County Commissioner District 2 race Tuesday evening with the final outcome decided by just a few percentage points.

In one of the closest and most watched races in the county primary Tuesday, two-term Republican incumbent Mike Yoder, R-Middlebury, proved successful in keeping his seat from slipping into the hands of opponent Darryl Riegsecker, R-Goshen.

The win was by no means a home run, however, as the vote proved so close that the win could not be called until every one of the county’s 117 precincts had reported in and every vote had been counted.

In the end, Yoder came away with 9,732 votes for a total of 51.9 percent of the vote, narrowly inching out Riegsecker, who took 9,019 votes for a total of 48.1 percent.

After the final numbers had been reported and the win declared for Yoder, it was plenty of back slapping, congratulations and quite a few sighs of relief over at the vintage music store Ignition Music in downtown Goshen where Yoder held what would turn out to be his victory party Tuesday evening.

“I’m happy to win, and to be able to serve again for another four years,” Yoder said as jubilant friends and campaign supporters mingled and chatted around him. “I can’t say I was really too surprised that it was close. We were hoping it wouldn’t be this close, but it was obviously a pretty competitive race.”

As a two-term incumbent, Yoder noted that while he has been through several elections before this, this primary proved to be the toughest and most competitive he has seen yet.

“This one was probably the most competitive race of the three I’ve been through,” Yoder said. “Looking back at this election, we had a really good strategy right from the beginning. We were going to talk about the issues that I thought were important to the community. Of course there’s the standard one of fiscal responsibility, and we had some pretty good numbers to back that up. Then the other big one was the Education Alliance and this need to develop a better trained, better educated work force to bring these higher paying jobs to the community.”

One thing he was not anticipating, however, was to be thrown into a battle over his support of a county zoning ordinance rewrite — an issue that would prove to be one of his opponent’s main playing cards in his attempt to unseat Yoder.

“The land use thing we sort of got forced into,” Yoder said. “That was really about the biggest issue my opponent brought against me. So in a sense, I had the misfortune to be on a Plan Commission that decided to redo a half-century old zoning ordinance, and that was part of my job to help with that. And I kind of got vilified for that. But with these types of campaigns, I think these things go with the territory. When you’ve been a county commissioners for two terms, and you’re actually doing something, you’re going to create some controversial situations.”

With no Democrats currently slated to oppose him in the upcoming general election in November, Yoder said right now he plans to leave the campaigning behind and just focus once again on his duties as a commissioner and a dairy farmer.

“We’ve got some campaign debts to pay off, and so we’re going to kind of wrap things up with that for now,” Yoder said. “Then after that we’ll see what the fall brings. But my guess is there will not be any competition in the fall.”

Riegsecker said he felt good about the race he ran, though he felt his campaign was treated somewhat unfairly by the press this go around, particularly when it comes to a comment he made during a campaign forum about his support of cutting county funding to the local not-for-profit ADEC.

“We ran a true and honest race, and I just think the negative publicity the press gave us, that didn’t help us,” Riegsecker said. “In my mind, we ran a true and honest race.”

Glad that it’s finally over, Riegsecker was quick to thank all of his friends, family and campaign supporters for their continued support throughout the tough campaign.

“I want to thank everybody who’s worked so hard on this campaign. We had a great group of people,” Riegsecker said. “Of all the elections I’ve gone through, this one I think was the roughest, the most negative. But I don’t regret anything. We ran a fair election, and I can sleep at night.”

As for his future political plans, Riegsecker said he plans to continue on in his role as a County Council member for at least the remaining two years of his current term. As for what’s to come after that, Riegsecker said he’s not counting anything out yet.

“Will I run again for commissioner? I’m not going to say I’m done with it,” Riegsecker said. “I’ve got four years to decide if I want to run again, so I’m keeping my options open.”