PICKENS — By a slim margin of 79 votes of the more than 4,200 cast, Harold (Pat) Welborn Jr. of Pickens defeated Ben Finley for the Pickens County Clerk of Court seat.

After the June 10 primary declared no winner, with neither Welborn and Finley claiming the required 50 percent of the ballots, 7.5 percent of voters turned out Tuesday during a runoff.

“Very happy,” Welborn said Tuesday night in reaction to the election. “I would have liked to have (had) a larger margin, but I’m very happy with the win.”

Welborn, 50, who will have to resign his current seat on Pickens City Council, will face no Democratic opponent during the November general election.

He said endorsements he received from numerous public officials, fire departments and others helped lift him to victory. Welborn will replace LeJette Gatlin, who is retiring from the position. Gatlin previously endorsed Welborn.

“I’ve just got to thank everybody that has helped me and voted for me, and the ones that didn’t vote for me, I’d like to hear from them because I’d like to get their vote in four years. I’d like to find out what I can do to make them happy,” Welborn said.

In part, Welborn pointed to the collection of delinquent child support payments as one issue that he hoped to address once in office.

“We’ve got a lot of non-custodial parents that are not paying, and we need to try to catch up with them and see what we can do with them,” he said. “Hopefully get them where the child will have what they need, and it’s a difficult thing. ... We’ll just have to work on it as hard as we can, and that’s something I’m not scared of is hard work. So we’ll just keep right at.”

He also said the courthouse has “very serious space issues” that needed to be addressed.

Welborn said he desired to “do the very best job that I can for the citizens of Pickens County. That was my goal to start with, and I plan on sticking with it.”

Finley, 51, who is retired from the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office, described the race as “very close.”

“I’m very happy with how I campaigned,” he said. “The numbers didn’t show up, and that’s what we needed.”

When asked Tuesday after the election what he would have liked to accomplish as clerk had he won, he said: “Well, that doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

Previously, he had emphasized the need to improve the local child support system, create an atmosphere of open government and beef up security at the courthouse.

As for the future, Finley answered “nope” when asked if he had any further political plans at the moment. For the meantime, his goals seemed simple.

“Right now, I’m going fishing,” he said.