As Phyllis Cole and Matt Shaheen regroup for Round Two of their battle for the chance to represent Precinct 1 on the Commissioners’ Court, the two Republican candidates are trying to decipher the messages voters sent Tuesday.

For Shaheen, the challenger, the message is clear: voters want term limits and lower taxes. Both he and the third-place candidate Douglas Reeves banged the drum of fiscal conservatism.

“The fact that a long-term incumbent couldn’t pull 50 percent of the vote sends a huge, huge message. I think our message resonated with people,” he said. “People are concerned about term limits and property tax relief. I have 19 years of business experience that I can apply to government. I think that’s what they’re looking for in a Republican candidate.”

For incumbent Cole who sought to bring a wider range of issues such as transportation into the campaign, she is still struggling to determine what the messages means.

“The main focus of my campaign is my experience and the knowledge that I bring to the table with all the different projects I’ve done,” she said. “We focused on that message. Collin County is in a growth mode, and it will double again in five years. We can’t falter in planning and development of roads.”

As the early votes rolled in, that seemed to be the message that appealed to voters. Cole took a quick lead, pulling ahead with 49.9 percent of the vote. Shaheen came in 12.25 percentage points behind her, collecting 37.65 of the 3,926 votes cast prior to Election Day. Reeves came in a distant third at 13.45 percent.

Then as the ballot boxes were counted Tuesday night, Cole's numbers began sinking while both Shaheen’s and Reeves inched upward. When the finally tally was posted at 2 a.m. the next day, Cole had the most votes of any of the three candidates with 47.2 percent of the 7,745 ballots cast, but it was not enough to declare her the winner. Shaheen had 38.06 percent while Reeves picked up 14.73 percent, adding up to 53 percent between the two.

So why did the numbers turn?

Shaheen thinks that County Judge Keith Self’s last-minute endorsement might be one reason. On Election Day, Self sent a blast e-mail to his supporters endorsing Shaheen in his race and Celina Mayor Corbett Howard in the Precinct 3 race against another long-time incumbent Joe Jaynes. Both Shaheen and Howard butted head with Jaynes in public debates.

“It [the e-mail] definitely had a positive impact. What Self is trying to do is unify the court so that it will work well together on issues that matter,” Shaheen said.

Cole said she didn’t know what role the e-mail might have had because she doesn’t know how widely it was distributed.

Self said he didn’t know exactly how many people received the e-mail either, but that the list was rather large. He also said Shaheen did not solicit the endorsement, and he could not speculate on whether it helped or hurt any one.

The county judge does believe voters are restless, pointing to the ouster of District Judge Charles Sandoval and the near upset of State Rep. Jerry Madden.

Sandoval has sat on the bench of the 380th District Court since 1996, and until this year, he never drew an opponent. He fell to Suzanne Wooten by a wide margin. In race for the state house District 67, Madden barely squeaked past Jon Cole, a 23-year-old political novice, who is not related to Phyllis Cole.

“The commissioners’ court has been the way that it is for more than a decade prior to my coming on board,” Self said. “I think this says the winds of change will continue to blow in Collin County, and that we need to pay attention to tax rates and to the near property tax revolt in Texas. We need to be slowing the growth of county government.”

In that e-mail, Self chastised the sitting commissioners’ court for not approving a tax cut.

However, Self’s e-mail seemed to have little impact in the Precinct 3 Republican primary race where Joe Jaynes, another long-time incumbent, handily beat Celina Mayor Corbett Howard. Jaynes will face Democrat Victor Manuel in November.

“I don’t know what that says about Jaynes winning. Precinct 3 is a lot more rural than Precinct 1. Victor will be a challenge for him,” Shaheen said.”I feel that this race was based on Ms. Cole’s voting record. It was two very different races.”

Others, such as Collin County’s Republican Party Chairwoman Kathy Ward, have speculated it was the large turn out in the Democratic primary that drew votes away from the Cole camp.

Though Cole doesn’t yet subscribe to that theory, it is something she plans to investigate. She said her team is going to analyze the numbers to determine what role that might have played.

That is not a theory Shaheen puts much stock into. “I don’t’ think we’ll know the impact as far as crossover voter for quiet some time. Some have argued that it helped or hurt, but I think it had more to do with the message of my principles. After all, another person in the race was a conservative too.”

“Any time you have three people in a race, you have a strong likelihood of a runoff,” she said. “We were prepared for that all along. It’s very difficult to second guess the reasons, and we’re, not focused on that.”

Self believes it might have been a little bit of both. He believes the numbers show that many who turned out were only interested in the presidential race, even on the Republican side.

Of the 11,500 ballots actually cast across the 31 voting precincts represented by Commissioners’ Court Precinct 1, about one-third voted for no one in this race.

“A lot of people came in just to vote just for president,” he said. “Voters didn’t get that far down on the ballot. They were more interested in the presidential primaries.”

Democratic voters who might be interested in this race are out of luck.

Now, this race is all that most voters have to focus on in the near future.

According to the Texas Secretary of State, only voters who participated in the Republican primary or did not vote at all will decide this race. Voters who participated in the Democratic primary are ineligible to vote in this race.

For both candidates, getting eligible voters back t to the polls is likely to be an uphill battle.

“There’s no stimulus to get people back to poles. They’re not going in to vote for president,” Cole conceded.

Still, both candidates are gearing up for the challenge, and neither says they plan to stray from their previous tactics, but they will narrow their aim to only those eligible to vote in the April 8 runoff.

“We’re not going to do anything differently. We ran a solid, positive campaign and we’re going to stayed focused on our issues. Those are my core beliefs — term limits and tax relief — and we’ll continue to focus on those. We’re going to concentrate on getting Republican voters back to the polls,” Shaheen said.

“We’ve been flooded with e-mails from new people who want to get engaged in the campaign. We have a lot of momentum going,” he said.

Cole is likewise focused.

“We’re working on getting the campaign organized. It’s amazing the phone calls we’ve had since Tuesday night. I’ve had a phone in each hand,” she said. “It just warms our heart to hear from so many supporters.”

Early voting begins March 31.