The Tarrant County Sheriff's race appears headed for a May runoff election as none of the three Republican candidates received more than 50-percent of the vote Tuesday.
Incumbent Sheriff Dee Anderson was leading challenger Bill Waybourn, the former Dalworthington Gardens police chief, once the first results were released and throughout the night.
Anderson, who has been sheriff the last 16 years, did not hold a public watch party for the results on Tuesday.
Waybourn and his supporters gathered at Saljo's Pizza in Pantego. The candidate told his supporters it was going to be a long night, but even as it appeared Anderson would get close to the 50-percent threshold Waybourn was confident a runoff would happen.
"We think that the areas that we worked on like the northeast and also the Arlington area and Mansfield, very few of those boxes have got in," Waybourn said. "We think we'll trend up in the next couple of hours possibly."
Among those gathered at Waybourn's party were Taya Kyle, widow of Navy SEAL and 'American Sniper' author Chris Kyle, Tarrant County Commissioner Andy Nguyen, juvenile court judge Tim Menikos, district clerk Tom Wilder and several police chiefs and officers from various departments.
