McCain wins Sumter County Council District 6 primary

Sumter County Council Chairman Jim McCain won Tuesday’s District 6 Democratic Primary and is the presumptive winner in November’s general election without Republican opposition.

A longtime incumbent, McCain captured 52.41% of the vote over challenger Gloria Rose Lee’s 47.59%. The unofficial tallies were 1,033 votes for McCain and 938 for Lee.

Late Tuesday, McCain told The Sumter Item that he wanted to thank all his supporters and said he was not planning initially to run for reelection this year until so many people reached out to him.

“I got so many calls from so many leaders in the community who said that now was not the time for me to leave because we have so many good things going on,” he said. “Friends and family -- for that matter -- said, ‘We have too much going on in Sumter now for you to leave.’

“It would have been a lot of institutional contacts and institutional knowledge that I would have been giving up; so, I am glad that I won. I am looking forward to the rest of this year and the next four years after that.”

Votes will be certified on Thursday at 10 a.m. at Sumter County Voter Registration Office, according to Director Pat Jefferson.

Lee is in the middle of her term as a member of Sumter School District’s Board of Trustees in the Area 7 seat, where she ran unopposed in 2024.