Liberal candidates dominated in Augusta’s school board election on Tuesday, retaining two seats and gaining a third previously held by a conservative after two conservative-leaning candidates ran for the same seat and split the vote.
[RELATED: Augusta Prepares for Important Vote on Three School-Board Seats…]
Going into the election, three seats were up for re-election on the nine-seat body: one at-large seat held by liberal Rita Pello, who ran for re-election; a Ward 4 seat held by conservative Katie McCormick, who could not run due to term limits; and a Ward 1 seat held by Staci Fortunato.
One candidate, Kelly Smith, ran against Pello, explicitly campaigning on protecting girls’ sports.
Smith’s message apparently did not resonate with voters, as Pello seized victory with 58 percent of the vote, according to WGME’s election results. Pello received 2,796 votes compared to Smith’s 1,992.
In Ward 1, a liberal candidate who works as a senior legislative aide for the Maine Senate Democrats, Samuel Baker, ran unopposed on the ballot, though one conservative-leaning candidate, John Reny, filed to run a declared write-in campaign.
As of Wednesday, multiple sources, including WGME and Ballotpedia, called the race in favor of Baker, though neither displays the percentage of votes won by Reny as of Wednesday morning.
Three candidates vied for the Ward 4 seat previously held by the conservative McCormick: two conservative-leaning candidates, William Clardy and Jaden Siracusa, and one liberal, Bobby Jo Bechard.
Late last month, current board member James Orr spoke to The Maine Wire and voiced concerns that having two conservative-leaning candidates vying for one seat would split the vote and lead to a victory for the liberal candidate.
His concern proved to be well-founded.
The race went to Bechard, who received 48 percent with 702 votes, while Siracusa garnered 31 percent with 453 votes, and Clardy obtained 21 percent with 311 votes.
If all the voters who selected Clardy and Siracusa had voted for a single candidate, that candidate would have defeated Bechard. However, due to the split, a liberal candidate now holds a seat previously held by a conservative member.
In the recent past, four members of the previous board voted to amend policies to comply with federal Title IX laws and bar transgender-identifying males from girls’ sports and spaces. One of those members has been replaced with Bechard, reducing the board’s chances of protecting girls’ sports even further.
