Tuesday night’s primary runoff could be a pretty interesting prediction of next year’s races for municipal offices.

With two incumbents losing their seats on the Adams County Board of Supervisors, the intent of voters seems clear, even in a lower turnout runoff.

District 5 supervisor Lynwood Easterling was defeated by Spanky Felter, who has no opposition in the general election and therefore wins the seat outright.

In District 2, longtime supervisor Virginia Salmon was defeated in the Democratic primary runoff by Henry Watts, who will face Republican Brad Fondren in November.

Meanwhile, incumbent Sheriff Tommy Ferrell will face Democrat Ronny Brown in a November race that both men have already raised tens of thousands of dollars to run.

Regardless of how anyone personally voted, it’s not hard to see that Tuesday’s primary runoff should be a wakeup call to incumbents.

If the trend continues, many of the city’s officeholders could find themselves without an elected position later next year.

Tuesday’s runoff outcomes speak in many ways to the tough times Natchez and Adams County are going through economically and to the tough decisions supervisors and other elected officials have made lately &045; whether it was Triad or garbage service.

While it’s far too early to predict the actual outcomes of the municipal elections, we can expect the races to be hotly contested.

And whether voters ultimately decide to keep incumbents or choose new officials, we believe the ideas sparked by having several candidates in the debate is a good thing.