Dan Willingham, a longtime Cullman County attorney discusses the tone of the GOP Primary while waiting on returns Tuesday night at the Cullman County Courthouse.

As former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore raced out to a commanding lead in the nationally-watched U.S. Senate election, the tone of the bitterly-fought contest was still weighing on the minds of voters.

Dan Willingham, a longtime Cullman County attorney, was among a few residents at the courthouse Tuesday to watch returns and assist with reporting vote totals.

“Negativism — most people don’t like that, but apparently sometimes it works,” Willingham observed of the bitter fight among GOP top runners Moore, Luther Strange and Mo Brooks.

Like many voters, Willingham remembered how the campaign had become embroiled at times in a contest among the top candidates to convince voters how committed each is to President Donald Trump’s America-first agenda.

“If you look back at Cullman County in the presidential election, Trump got 88 percent of the vote,” Willingham said. “You can also look at that as Hillary Clinton lost 88 percent of the vote. What’s more important to me is which candidate had true conservative political values; that’s what a lot of voters were looking for.”

Several voters at the polls earlier in the day were also concerned about the fractious nature of the GOP campaign.

Edgar Veigl voted at Cullman City Hall, noting the choice among the candidates was a hard one to make — because, said Veigl, each comes with some character flaws.

“There’s something wrong with each of them,” he said. “It’s difficult.”

Steve and Amy Byrum both said they voted for Strange, based on the president’s endorsement.

“We support the president, so we support his pick,” Amy Byrum said. 

Other Cullman residents said they cast their votes for Roy Moore, the former Alabama Chief Justice, including Melinda Jennings.

“He’s a Christian and he has good values,” Jennings said.

Moore also received an endorsement from Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, and Jennings said that helped her decide that Moore was the right choice. 

As the vote-tallying was coming to an end, Cullman County Republican Party President Waid Harbison said he was disappointed in the voter turnout, both in Cullman County and the state.

“This is one of the most important elections in the state in decades. I hear a lot of complaints around our area about healthcare and taxes, and while those were topics in this race I think some of the message got lost in the friction,” Harbison said. “I think Moore took more of the high road, and I think that means a lot to voters here.”

With Strange and Moore headed into a September runoff election, Harbison said he hopes voters will come out in larger numbers — and that the candidates will focus squarely on issues.

“You have to think, Jeff Sessions along with Richard Shelby were in office representing Alabama for around two decades. Sessions kept the conservative message consistently in his time,” Harbison said. “You have to wonder, too, after things became so negative in this campaign, if Mo Brooks’ supporters will come back out to vote or stay home. And you have to wonder, if Luther had been less negative, what the result would have been.”

The runoff is scheduled for Sept. 26. The winner will move on to face Democrat Doug Jones in the general election on Dec. 12. Jones took around 65 percent of the vote, in a Democratic primary which accounted for less than 8 percent of the total number of votes cast in Cullman County.

Tyler Hanes contributed to this report.