Sunday, November 6, 2011

NPR Features Wake County School Board $125,000 Run-off

There is a special run-off election on Tuesday for the deciding seat on the Wake County NC School Board.  Whereas all Republicans won in the 2009 elections, which gave them the controlling majority on the Board, this year all Democrats won the formerly nonpartisan election.  However, Democrat Kevin Hill did not win by enough to avoid a run-off election with the next highest-ranking candidate, Republican Heather Losurdo.

Given that this run-off would decide whether the Republicans or Democrats dominate on the school board, I expected that there would be a lot of focus on this race.  However, I never imagined that it would raise so much money.  At this point, nearly $125,000 has been donated to the two candidates, much from people and organization outside Wake County, and even outside North Carolina.

This is such an amazing amount of money to spend on a single school board race that it was the focus of a new article today on the National Public Broadcasting (NPR) program All Things Considered.  To hear their 10 minute segment on the Wake County race, and some other places where national groups are pouring outside money into local elections, visit their website here.

The Republican candidate, Losurdo, has received twice as much money as the incumbent Democrat Hill.  It will be interesting to see if that enables her to beat Hill this time around.

If you happen to live in Wake County's School Board District 3, don't forget to vote on Tuesday.

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