Jefferson County will have a new county clerk in 2023.
Ken Waller has announced he will not seek re-election for a second four-year term as county clerk.
Jeannie Goff, who has worked for the County Clerk’s Office for 35 years, mostly as the second-in-command to the elected officeholder, has announced she will run for the Republican Party’s nomination for county clerk in the August 2022 primary election.
Waller said he’s been mulling over his future for some time.
“A couple of months ago, I sat down with Jeannie and told her that I was considering not continuing in county government, and that I was considering a position in state government, possibly as a city administrator or similar position or something in the private sector,” he said. “I asked her that if I were to go in that direction, if she had any interest in running for the job.”
Goff, 55, of De Soto has worked under five county clerks, starting with Eleanor Koch Rehm, and said she believes it’s time for her to seek the top job.
“I never thought it was right to run against my boss,” she said. “There’s too much going on when it comes to elections, and if I were to run against an incumbent, the staff would not know who to report to. It would be confusing. There wasn’t a good fit until now.”
Waller said he would endorse Goff.
“I am 100 percent behind her,” he said. “It’s time for her to be county clerk. She does everything she can to keep the office running smoothly. I believe she’ll do a great job.”
Goff said she’s learned something different from each of her bosses.
“When Eleanor hired me, I was 22 years old,” Goff said. “She drew me into the position (of chief election clerk) and challenged me to teach myself.”
After briefly leaving the office under Rehm’s successor, Janet McMillian, Goff returned when Wes Wagner was elected in 2006, and stayed under Randy Holman and then Waller.
“Wes was more hands-on, and he showed me what it was to be a boss and work side-by-side with the staff,” she said. “With Randy, we worked to update the original optical ballot scanning system and modernized the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)-approved voting systems. He was very interested in learning everything about the office, and I was able to help him learn.”
Under Waller, she said, she’s learned a lot about problem-solving in the face of the pandemic.
“It takes time to figure out how to run an election under those circumstances, but we did it,” Goff said.
Waller credited Goff with keeping the process going under trying times.
“A lot of the things we did with respect to COVID – setting up satellite offices, figuring out the processes with mail-in and increased absentee voting, making sure we had our election judges properly trained and feeling safe at the polls – Jeannie and I did together. She had really good ideas on how things should be done, and the result was elections that all of Jefferson County should be proud of.”
Goff said her experience should be her big selling point with voters.
“It takes time for a new person to figure out how the office works. An election cycle works at a very fast pace, and COVID threw a lot of new things into the works,” she said. “During an election, time is of the essence, and it’s tough to stop to explain things to someone new. I think I would provide consistency. The most important thing we do is ensure that we protect the public trust in our elections. We want voters to be comfortable when they go to the polls that their votes will be counted correctly. We absolutely do everything we can to make the process of voting, and the security of the system, as good as it can be, within our budget. That would not change if I am elected,” she said.
Goff, a lifelong county resident, is a St. Pius X High School graduate and attended Jefferson College. She and her husband of 22 years, Don, have two daughters and a granddaughter.
In addition to running elections, the County Clerk’s Office maintains the county’s records, issues liquor licenses and solid waste licenses and administers notary public commissions.
The county clerk is paid an $86,120 annual salary.
Filing for the August 2022 primary election runs from Feb. 22, 2022, through March 29, 2022.