Lingering races will be settled for local and state offices next week when voters return to the polls for the runoff election stemming from last month’s party primaries.

In Cullman County, that means a slate stocked with GOP candidates, from the high-profile race between Mo Brooks and Katie Britt for U.S. Senate to the District 4 race for associate Cullman County commissioner between frontrunner Corey Freeman and Kristi Creel Bain, last month’s runner-up.

Bain, as well as both GOP runoff candidates for the Alabama House District 14 seat, took their message to voters this week at a local speaking appearance hosted by the Republican Women of Cullman County. Freeman did not attend the event, citing a prior scheduling conflict.

Bain, a first-time entrant into the political arena, finished second to Freeman in the May 24 primary with 24.82 percent of the vote against Freeman’s 35.08 percent. The two edged out three other candidates in the primary to earn their spot in the June 21 runoff, which Bain encouraged residents to remember in the face of anticipated low voter turnout. “The 21st holds a lot for this state — and it holds a lot for this country,” she said, urging people to head to the polls.

Bain used her time before an attentive GOP crowd Tuesday to pledge her professional expertise (she’s the state commerce department’s north Alabama assistant director for Alabama Industrial Development Training) if she wins the commissioner’s seat, liaising with state and federal sources to identify existing sources of public funds that Cullman County, she said, currently isn’t tapping.

“If we do not start using the money that is out there for us; if we do not go after it, it will keep getting given somewhere else,” she said, citing a recent USDA grant for rural roads that, thanks to what she described as a lack of local awareness, went to other Alabama counties.

“Those are things, as county commissioners, that we need to be going after,” she said. “We need to be seeing [county] financial reports — and what I’m about to say steps on a lot of toes — and see if you can find one for 2019, because I can’t. I don’t want to see a budget of what you want to spend; I want to see what you did spend.”

Alabama House Rep. Tim Wadsworth, the incumbent in the District 14 legislative seat, will face challenger Tom Fredericks in the runoff to determine the GOP’s nominee. Recently altered as part of the Census-based redrawing of Alabama’s legislative map, District 14 encompasses nearly all of Winston County, the western and southern portions of Walker County, and a small area of northwestern Cullman County that includes Battleground, an area near West Point, and a stretch near Alabama Highway 157 extending to Terri Pines country club.

Wadsworth, an Arley-based tax attorney, leaned on his record of securing basic infrastructure for what’s long been a mostly rural district, including new medical services in Winston County that equip responders with lifesaving resources typically found in hospital emergency rooms.

Fredericks, owner of Decatur-area power equipment retailer Fredericks Outdoor, said he may be a recent newcomer to the district, but aims to “push back” against the GOP centrism of “RINOs” (Republicans in name only), while putting an end to what he described as “a history of favoritism” within District 14 that he pledged to eradicate.

Polls open across Alabama at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, June 21 for the primary runoff election, and close at 7 p.m. For county-by-county sample ballots and additional information, visit the Alabama Secretary of State’s website at www.sos.alabama.gov/alabama-votes/2022-primary-runoff-election-sample-ballots.