As usual, there are plenty of ballots left to count in Pima County (thanks to those irresponsible voters who dropped off early ballots at their polling places), so the election ain’t over yet. The unofficial word: There are 60,000 to 70,000 ballots left to sort through.
There are two remarkably close races out there:
• In Tucson’s Legislative District 10, one of the most competitive in the state, just a handful of votes separate the three candidates for two seats in the Arizona House of Representatives. Democrat and Political rookie Kirsten Engle leads the pack with 37,713 votes; Democratic incumbent Rep. Stefanie Mach is in second place with 37,290 votes; and Republican Todd Clodfelter trails her by just 36 votes at 37,254.
• In the Tucson Unified School District race for three seats, incumbent board member Mark Stegeman leads the seven-member pack with 47,480 votes. Coming in second is incumbent board member Kristel Foster, at 44,297. And in third place: Rachael Sedgwick, with 40,907 votes. But Sedgwick is ahead of three-time candidate Betts Putnam-Hildago by just 927 votes, so as the remaining ballots are counted, we could see Putnam-Hildago narrow that gap. One thing is for sure: Incumbent Cam Juarez, who has just 37,006 votes as of this morning, won’t be returning for a second term, which definitely scrambles the current balance of power on the TUSD board.
Check out the Pima County results here.
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2016.
Power on the TUSD Board belongs to Raul Grijalva. And George Soros. But not for long.
Hopefully Sanchez will follow Juarez out the door
I thought I was prepared for anything after the ridiculous results of the 2014 TUSD Board race, in which two conspicuously underperforming incumbents (Grijalva & Hicks) were re-elected, defeating a couple of worthy challengers, but this result may beat even that.
Stegeman and Foster, the two leaders of the dysfunctional sniping and counter-sniping on this Board, have regained their seats?
Some characteristic highlights from the TUSD Board candidate forums:
Stegeman: “Fact check!”
Foster: “Fact check!”
(The back and forth assertions and contradictory counter-assertions happened repeatedly, and in multiple forums, leaving many attendees baffled about what the actual facts were.)
Stegeman: “I think everyone should watch some video tapes of our Board meetings.”
Foster: “Yes, they definitely should watch videos of Board meetings.”
(Both of them thought — wrongly — that what we would see would be their own angelic behavior contrasted with the demonic behavior of their opponent. Instead, what those who watched Board meetings saw, sadly, were two Board members behaving more like middle schoolers in a TUSD classroom where the teacher was ineffective at checking the students’ self-indulgent and counter-productive misbehavior.)
So the electorate has RE-appointed these two, and, among the various challengers, has selected the candidate with least direct experience with TUSD to sit between the two entrenched factions and, with no direct connection to the sites, to try to find some way of figuring out what is actually going on in this district, which is always guaranteed to be different from what administration is reporting.
Wow. Sedgwick might have had a chance if she’d been elected together with Putnam-Hidalgo and Rustand. Praying that the ongoing counts will put Putnam-Hidalgo into that third slot.
Excuse me, but how does voting in any form make me irresponsible? From the Arizona Daily Star, because I couldn’t find the information on the Weekly site: “You can drop your ballot off at a polling place. If you were to request another ballot at a polling place, youd get a provisional ballot and it would slow down the process.” Wouldn’t you say the “irresponsible” voters are the roughly 45% who didn’t bother to show up at all?
to Silent Majority is Neither… what makes you think George Soros is concerned about Tucson’s School Board? That is a fairly indicative statement concerning your mental health….lol.
The early voters who dropped off their ballots at the precincts did fine. Recorders had them over to the Elections Dept by the 10th. Provisionals are taking time, but even those will be there this week. See the Recorders website. Counting of ballots started Nov 8 and there were lots!