Cheetos Big Winner In At-Large School Board Race
With all the tumult and turmoil that has roiled Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools the past year, voter turnout in the countywide at-large Board of Education race trickled in at a pitiful pace, with nearly 90 percent of registered voters opting to sit on the couch and eat Cheetos. The unofficial numbers from the elections board showed that out of 609,941 registered voters, only 98,831 bothered to cast a ballot, an anemic 16 percent turnout.
Wholly unsurprising given Char-Meck voter demographics that over the years have lurched liberal, Democrat and African-American, two African-American Democrats were the top vote-getters in Tuesday night’s at-large school board race, where 14 candidates were vying for three spots.
Ericka Ellis-Stewart, a vocal critic of the board’s decision to save money by shuttering grossly underutilized and low performing schools, led the at-large ticket with 35,265 votes. For anybody keeping track at home, that’s thumbs-up from a whopping 5.7 percent of registered voters. But that was a relative resounding vote of confidence compared to Mary McCray and Tim Morgan, who rounded out the at-large winners circle, each receiving support from just over 4 percent of possible voters.
McCray, a retired teacher and former head of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Association of Educators – the closet thing in this neck of the woods to a teachers union – reeled in 26,571 votes. Tim Morgan, a Republican incumbent who supported CMS’ tax-hike budget earlier this year and gave up his District 6 seat to run at-large, placed third with 24,859 votes, slightly outpacing Elyse Dashew, who raised more money ($37,821) than any other school board candidate but could only manage to collect 23,518 votes.
The board’s six district seats aren’t up for reelection until 2013, leaving the new board with five Democrats and three Republicans, assuming tradition is followed and the board chooses a Republican to fill Morgan’s vacated district seat. Of course, tradition also holds that the top at-large vote-getter is named board chair, and that didn’t work out so well for outgoing at-large member Kaye McGarry, a staunch conservative who last time around drew more votes than anybody and was tossed under the bus in her bid for chair. That position went, instead, to alleged independent Eric Davis.
Whatever the new political composition of the supposedly non-partisan board, its members will face the heady challenges of hiring a new superintendent and dealing with a controversial performance pay plan for teachers, along with juggling the perennial hot potatoes of student assignment and classroom funding allocation.
Those are big issues that will have significant community impact, which makes it all the more baffling why so few voters bothered to cast a ballot.
We need your help! If you like PunditHouse, please consider donating to us. Even $5 a month can make a difference!
Short URL: https://pundithouse.com/?p=7727
