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After seeing a hard campaign that often turned ugly, voters returned South Carolina Rep. B.R. Skelton to the state house for another term, giving the incumbent a nearly 9 percent margin of victory in the Republican primary.

In the race involving South Carolina Senate District 3, incumbent Sen. Larry Martin tallied up 80 percent of the vote in the Republican primary to romp to an easy 9,859 to 2,442 victory over Central mayor Mac Martin.

Unofficial vote totals from Tuesday night gave Skelton 1,524 votes, or 54.35 percent, to 1,280 votes, or 45.65 percent for challenger Trey Whitehurst.

Rancor in the race had focused on support for Whitehurst from South Carolinians for Responsible Government, a group often connected with out of state financial contributions to candidates who support, among other positions, the school voucher program supported by Gov. Mark Sanford.

Skelton was grateful to the voters for his victory, he said.

“The voters saw the efforts on the part of outside interests to introduce issues that were not issues into this race,” Skelton said. “I respect the work ethic of my opponent, but I don’t respect the outside interests who supported him.”

Skelton said he looks forward to getting down to the work of addressing the issues he sees as most pressing to the state.

Among those, he said, was revamping the financing of K-12 education, better funding for the road system and a comprehensive revision of the state tax system to make it more equitable.

Mac Martin displayed no bitterness in defeat.

“We had a competitive race and the only losers were those who didn’t participate,” Mac Martin said.

Larry Martin in the Senate race was stunned at the margin of his win.

“I’m humbled by it,” he said. “It was a very clean race, and very honorable.”

He looks forward to getting back to addressing such issues as the combating criminal domestic violence and restructuring the state government to make it more accountable.

Neither Skelton nor Martin faces Democratic opposition in November.