THE 2010 PARTY PRIMARIES are history, aside from a smattering of runoffs yet to come. So who were the biggest winners and losers?

LOSER: One of the biggest has to be state Sen. John Wiles (R-Kennesaw), who was never able to overcome the fallout from his peripheral involvement in the teen drinking scandal of last winter. As events showed, Wiles' support all along was a mile wide, but only an inch deep. Residents of his heavily conservative district had generally liked his voting record, but his brusque, domineering personality made him few friends. And when a politically viable and personally very popular alternative decided to run for Wiles' seat - former Cobb school board Chairman Lindsey Tippins - the handwriting was on the wall. Tippins won a landslide 60 percent of the vote.

LOSERS: Wiles didn't go to the bottom by himself when his ship sank. Also on board were the high-profile politicians who had endorsed him, like Georgia's senior Senator Saxby Chambliss, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle. (In fact, Georgia's junior senator, Johnny Isakson of east Cobb, showed better sense than Chambliss by deciding not to meddle in a local-level race.)

Moreover, the deck was crowded with lobbyists and political action committee types, who had showered $144,000 on his campaign this spring, and who knows how much after the June 30 reporting deadline. It dwarfed what Tippins raised.

One politico even remarked on the similarities between what happened to Wiles and what happened to then-Gov. Roy Barnes in 2002. Barnes' bid for re-election failed that year despite a huge funding advantage over opponent Sonny Perdue. Though far more personable than Wiles, Barnes had angered so many various constituencies with his activist style of governing that they outnumbered his supporters. If there's a silver lining for Wiles, it's that state voters proved Tuesday via Barnes' primary win that they are willing to give defeated - and publicly contrite - politicians a second chance.

WINNER: The Georgia Bar Association and former president Robert Ingram of Marietta, who had made defeating Wiles their top priority. Ingram had emailed Bar leaders in May saying Wiles had made the Bar and the judiciary "his #1 enemy. ... Over the past several years, there has been no legislator to work harder in vilifying the judiciary and the State Bar of Georgia than State Senator John Wiles." Wiles, an attorney, had supported a proposal to abolish the bar and also wanted to allow graduates of non-accredited law schools to take the state bar exam.

WINNER: The Cobb Chamber of Commerce. Why? Because its candidate for Cobb Commission Chairman, Tim Lee, won, even though unknown and barely funded challenger Larry Savage still claimed an impressive 40 percent of the votes. Lee was a strong supporter of the now apparently dead scheme to persuade the county commission to outsource its Economic Development to the Chamber, even though he hedged his comments once the secret plan was brought to light by the MDJ. Lee also is in the tank for the Cobb Development Authority, which became controversial after Around Town reported this spring that in addition to helping entice new business, generated signficiant slush-fund revenues for Chamber insiders.

WINNER: The Chamber, again, because its other candidate, Waste Management Co. lobbyist JoAnn Birrell, is in a runoff against Earl Stine for Lee's old seat representing Northeast Cobb on the commission. If elected, she's expected to be a dependable vote with Lee for the Chamber. If she's elected, that is. Recall how Southeast Cobb veteran Commissioner Joe Lee Thompson was the leading vote-getter with 44.3 percent in that 2008 primary over Bob Ott (40 percent) and Ron Sifen (15 percent), but failed to get his supporters back to the polls for the runoff and saw Ott sweep the table with 64.9 percent of the vote.

LOSERS: Northeast Cobb residents who took part in early voting and thus cast their ballots before the revelations in the MDJ late last week that Stine had been pleaded guilty a few years back to a road-rage charge on an Atlanta freeway.

LOSER: GOP gubernatorial candidate John Oxendine, who had led the pack in fundraising and in the polls almost to the very last. It seemed the better the public got to know Oxendine, the less it liked him. And after being constantly peppered with news of ethics violation allegations against Oxendine for his conduct as state Insurance Commissioner, voters may have taken a "Where there's this much smoke, there's bound to be fire somewhere" approach to his candidacy.

LOSER: Hard-working state Rep. Don Wix (D-Mableton), who had held Barnes' old legislative seat since 1999, but who this year fell victim of the changing demographics of his district. Wix was one of the last of an endangered species in this state: a moderate Democratic office-holder.

LOSERS: Cobb School Superintendent Fred Sanderson and his clique of supporters on the board, including Chairwoman Lynnda Crowder-Eagle, Holli Cash, John Abraham and David Banks. There'll soon be at least two new faces on the board - those of longtime board critic Kathy Angelucci and Scott Sweeney, also no fan of Sanderson.

WINNER: Current school board member Alison Bartlett, a frequent Sanderson foe who appears to have gained two allies. No more will she constantly be the "odd man out."

LOSER: Deputy Superintendent Dr. Steve Constantino, a Sanderson protege many feared was being groomed to succeed Sanderson upon his retirement next year. That now looks less likely.

LOSER: School board attorney Glenn Brock, who has kept that job (worth an estimated $2 million a year these days) for more than two decades without his contract ever being publicly rebid, and whose advice in recent years hasn't been much better than what the board could have purchased from the Psychic Friends Network or a gypsy with a crystal ball. And don't expect Brock to be tapped to lead the search for the next superintendent, even though he has an executive search firm in his law-practice nest. Letting Brock scope out the next super makes as much sense as letting an employee hire his own boss.

LOSERS: Acworth Mayor Tommy Allegood and Kennesaw Mayor Mark Mathews, who were deeply and publicly invested in the candidacy of flaky school board candidate Bill Borden.

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AROUND TOWN’S usually reliable source at City Hall got it wrong this time when he said that Councilman Philip Goldstein owns the tattoo parlor on Powder Springs Street a few blocks from the Square (see Tuesday’s AT).

In fact, the manager of Kustom Xpressions Tattoo & Piercing Studio, Dusty Wilkins, a Harrison High School graduate who has been in the business for seven years, said he rents the building from Greg Adcock, who used to operate Cartersville Carpets off the Square.

Meanwhile, AT got it from the horse’s mouth — or, in other words, Goldstein himself (which is what AT should have done regarding the tattoo parlor story) — that he closed on the purchase of the old DuPre’s building next to the Theatre on the Square during the first week of this month.

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NEW COMMISSION CHAIRMAN Tim Lee will be sworn in at 4 p.m. Tuesday in the Commission Meeting Room.

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A MEMORIAL SERVICE is planned at noon today at Burnt Hickory Baptist Church near Harrison High School in west Cobb for Army Pfc. Jacob Dennis, 22, who was killed in action in Afghanistan on July 3. Officiating will be pastors the Rev. Mike Stephens and the Rev. Dr. Nelson Price. Dennis was a 2005 graduate of North Cobb Christian School and will be buried in the Georgia National Cemetery in Canton. Friends, neighbors and others with flags and patriotic displays are asked to line Burnt Hickory Road outside the church and the Patriot Guard Riders will provide a motorcycle escort to the cemetery.

“I’ve watched more than one young soldier or Marine come home for good to Cobb and have been disappointed so far at the response of our neighbors when it comes to honoring them,” MDJ columnist Laura Armstrong, who is helping organize the show of support, emailed AT and others on Friday.

“Other communities make sure their streets are lined with flags, signs and people. We have not. Unless you’ve experienced it you just don’t know what an impact we could have. … We here in Cobb say all the time we support the troops. Well, now it’s time to really show that we do and not just give it lip service.”

Sheriff Neil Warren, whose wife, Penny, taught Sunday school at Roswell Street Baptist with Dennis’ mother, Renee Dennis, is helping coordinate traffic control for the event.