While official totals weren’t available as of press time, Escambia County’s Greg Albritton was leading the race for State Senate District 22 seat.

Albritton faced Harry D’Olive Jr. on the Republican ticket and ended the night with 1,480 votes to D’Olive’s 260 votes.

“Right now, I’m cautiously optimistic,” Albritton said from his post inside the county courthouse Tuesday as he received box returns from other areas in the district via text message. “First, I haven’t won yet. They always say that you want to get out of the runoff at least what you see in the primary election. We did that and more.

“I think that we surpassed that number in every county,” he said. “The people understood and we worked hard to get our message out.”

In the primary, five candidates sought the seat; however, Albritton led the race overwhelmingly, finishing with 951 votes in the county, or 46.28 percent. D’Olive followed with 111 votes, or 5 percent; however, strong totals throughout the remainder of the district catapulted him into the Tuesday’s runoff race.

In Tuesday’s runoff race, Albritton ended the night locally with 85 percent of the vote to D’Olive’s 15 percent. Statewide totals were not immediately available.

Winner of the night’s runoff election will face Democrat Susan Smith of Atmore in November’s General Election.