18 votes separated a Beaufort City Council race. Did an accidental dial tip the scale?

A voicemail in which Beaufort City Council candidate Josh Gibson’s wife briefly discussed Gibson’s campaign with her father ended up in the hands of Josh Scallate, another candidate in the race, thanks to an inadvertent “butt dial.”

How that happened in early October apparently was a fluke, and the subsequent distribution of the private conversation remains a mystery. But in the postmortem of a very close election Tuesday, the question is — did the errant voicemail help tip the race in Scallate’s favor?

In the five-person race for two seats, Scallate, a firefighter with the Lady’s Island-St. Helena Fire District, eked out a 18-vote win, 1,371 to 1,353 votes, over Gibson, the former chairman of the city Zoning Board of Appeals.

Incumbent Mike McFee easily finished first with 2,122 votes, winning re-election.

What’s troubling to Gibson and his wife, Michelle Prentice, is that not only was a private conversation circulated to the public, but, they say, Prentice didn’t say anything controversial. In it, Prentice innocuously describes the Mossy Oaks neighborhood as a working-class comnmunity, which could favor Scallate.

Gibson and Prentice suspect the Scallate campaign of circulating the private conversation in unflattering context, and they think it contributed to Gibson’s loss.

“They’re clearly spreading it around with the intent of trying to drag my wife into this and say she said something bad,” Gibson told the Beaufort Gazette and Island Packet. “The worst thing she said is that Mossy Oaks is a working-class neighborhood. I’ve never understood that to be derogatory.”

Scallate denied he had anything to do with it.

While acknowledging that he did receive a copy of the voicemail, Scallati says he did not spread it and, in fact, had it for a few weeks before sharing it with just one person — another candidate in the race.

“I never wanted it to be used against Mr. Gibson or his wife,” Scallate said. “I was very disappointed and upset that it was circulated and used as an attack.”

The race was so close a recount was conducted, with Jean Felix of the Board of Registration and Elections confirming Saturday that Scallate won the race by 18 votes. Immediately following Tuesday’s election, Scallate’s margin of victory had been 23 votes.

It all started with lunch

A bizarre set of circumstances on Oct. 2 — five weeks before the election — led to the private conversation being recorded and sent to the wrong person and eventually distributed more widely via email. How widely isn’t clear. But among those who received copies were local media and at least a couple of sitting City Council members, says Gibson, describing it as “some sort of organized distribution.” The Packet and Gazette received the voicemail at the time but chose not to publish it before the election.

Gibson’s wife, Prentice, a member of Beaufort’s Historic District Review Board, was taking her parents out to eat.

At some point, as he was walking from the house to Prentice’s car, her father, who is 87, had inadvertently called a telephone number — a butt dial. That call was not picked up but the conversation was recorded when it went to voicemail.

As she arrived at the home, Prentice can be heard explaining that Josh Gibson could not make it because of the campaign. There’s a brief conversation about where to go to lunch. Then Prentice’s father asks how Gibson’s campaign is going.

“I think he’s likely to win,” Prentice says of Gibson, “but the minute you think you’re likely to win. … ”

Prentice continues that one candidate is a firefighter, referring to Scallate. She notes the size of Beaufort’s firefighting community, including the Mossy Oaks neighborhood.

“There’s a lot of people in that neighborhood,” Prentice says, “and I think we would have a hard time winning that working-class neighborhood, potentially.”

Gibson says another candidate in the race told him on Oct. 29 — 11 days before the election — that the voicemail was out there, making the rounds via email and was portrayed in a way that’s “smearing your wife and a conversation she had.”

It all may have come to nothing except for this: Prentice’s father had accidentally called Tommy Buskirk. Buskirk is a fishing guide who Prentice’s father had previously called as he researched a fishing trip. But Buskirk, it turns out, is also a firefighter at the Lady’s Island-St. Helena Island Fire Department, where Scallate works.

“We should have bought a lottery ticket that day,” Prentice said. “The chances of this happening are just so minute. But it did.”

Scallate: No intent to hurt campaign

Scallate, for his part, says he didn’t do anything to hurt Gibson’s campaign.

It’s true, he says, that Buskirk forwarded the voicemail to him.

But Buskirk, Scallate adds, did not really know the meaning of the message. He simply forwarded it to him because he knew he was running for City Council. “He had really no involvement,” Scallate said.

Buskirk declined comment when asked about the audio.

For his part, Scallate says, he sent the voicemail to one person, Michael Andersen. Andersen, another candidate in the race, finished last with 760 votes. Scallate says he regrets sending the audio to Andersen.

“I sent that message after having it for several weeks to one person, with the understanding that I had no intention of distributing it in any way,” Scallate says.

For his part, Andersen says, he was the candidate who gave the recording to Gibson so he wouldn’t be blind-sided by it. He also sent the audio to local media, he says, but that’s all.

Andersen doesn’t think the recording is why Gibson lost. A close race was expected, Andersen noted, adding there were other factors.

“I would expect candidates to take a hard look at how they conducted themselves during the campaign,” Andersen said, “and do some introspection on what went well and did not go well.”

Scallate wins Mossy Oaks

The South Carolina Election Commission says the audio is “outside the Commission’s jurisdiction.”

In the final candidate forum in the campaign, which came before he learned of the voicemail, Gibson discussed what a clean campaign it had been.

Looking back, he says, there is always more than one factor when a candidate loses a close election but he can’t help but feel the voicemail was a big one. He says he should have fought back during the campaign “instead of trying to take the high road.”

In the end, Scallate outpolled Gibson in the three Mossy Oaks precincts by 181 votes, 626 to 445.

“By the way, I lived in that neighborhood,” Gibson says. “My sister lives in that neighborhood. My parents live in that neighborhood.”