Medford Mayor Randy Sparacino, back left, reacts to voting numbers being tallied Tuesday evening in Medford in the race for Jackson County commissioner.

Republican Randy Sparacino appeared headed to a commanding victory Wednesday morning in the race for Jackson County commissioner against Democrat Denise Krause.

As of Thursday morning, Sparacino received 56.84% (62,603) of the 110,139 votes counted so far, against Krause’s 43.04% (47,403), according to updated numbers from the Jackson County Elections office. Turnout in the county is at 70.86%, with 116,682 voters out of 164,662 eligible voters casting ballots so far.

More mail-in ballots are being processed through Nov. 12. Final election results will be certified Dec. 2.

“It was a very tough campaign,” Sparacino told the Rogue Valley Times Tuesday evening. “We campaigned really hard.”

Sparacino, who is currently Medford mayor, ran what he described as a “positive campaign.”

He joined 30 others at a private gathering to celebrate his apparent victory, though he never thought it was a foregone conclusion.

“I always go into whatever I’m doing cautiously,” he said.

Sparacino said he would be meeting with county officials, including Dave Dotterrer, the Jackson County commissioner he will be replacing, to get brought up to speed.

“The first order of business is to find out exactly what they’re working on right now,” he said.

Sparacino said he will spend considerable time on the issues that he campaigned on: public safety, economic development, housing and homelessness.

Sparacino retired as Medford police chief in 2019 after a career in law enforcement that began in 1994.

Democrat Krause, a director on the Rogue Valley Transportation District board, said the results show that Sparacino has taken a sizable lead.

“It doesn’t look close enough to overcome,” she said in an interview Tuesday night. “I always knew it was going to be an uphill climb.”

Krause said she was disappointed in the approximately 6,000 voters who didn’t vote for either candidate.

She said she’s also disappointed at the campaign dollars from The Chamber of Medford & Jackson County political action committee that bought radio and TV ads for various candidates, including $25,000 for Sparacino.

“This is about big money against regular people,” Krause said. “I’m really proud of the campaign we ran and the people who supported our campaign.”

Krause was the chief petitioner in the Jackson County for All campaign, which had three ballot measures in the May primary.

The ballot measure to cut Jackson County commissioners salaries to $75,000 received overwhelming support from voters but was invalidated because the two other measures, which would have increased the size of the commissioner board from three to five and also made the position nonpartisan, both failed.