Opponents of forced busing and year-round school reassignments in Wake County won a critical victory Tuesday, securing a majority on the school board after reform candidate John Tedesco won three-fourths of the vote in a runoff election.
Both Tedesco and his opponent, Cathy Truitt, oppose the school system’s policy of busing students based on socioeconomic level, but left-leaning groups, including the NAACP, backed Truitt. Tedesco’s win is viewed as a victory for school choice advocates and parents upset over mandatory reassignments to year-round schools.
Tedesco fell just short of winning a majority of votes Oct. 6 in the district 2 race, taking 49 percent of the vote to Truitt’s 24 percent. Truitt filed for a runoff the next day, scheduled for early November.
But in a surprising about face two weeks later, she endorsed Tedesco and asked that the election be canceled, although she never withdrew officially from the race.
The North Carolina Board of Elections ruled Wednesday that the runoff should proceed as planned. The county already had spent around $30,000 on the race, including printing ballots marked with the names of both candidates. Truitt said Saturday that she would have served if elected.
Yesterday’s results mean that conservatives will have a 5-4 reform majority on the school board, since three reform candidates already secured seats on the board in early October. That’s a major turnaround from recent years, when Ron Margiotta, a school board member from southwest Wake County, was the board’s lone conservative voice.
The new school board members will be seated in December.
Also on Tuesday, voters in Charlotte and Chapel Hill elected replacements for two long-serving mayors, while Greensboro’s incumbent mayor was upset by a political newcomer.
In Charlotte, Democrat Anthony Foxx will replace outgoing Republican mayor Pat McCrory, who served 14 years in that position and was the Republicans’ gubernatorial candidate in 2008. Foxx won by a thin margin — about 3,200 votes — over Republican John Lassiter.
The same day, Chapel Hill voters elected Mark Kleinschmidt, an attorney who has served on the Chapel Hill Town Council for eight years, to replace current mayor Kevin Foy. Kleinschmidt, who was endorsed by some Democratic groups, won 49 percent to 46 percent against Republican-backed Matt Czajkowski, also a Chapel Hill council member.
In Greensboro, Republican Bill Knight staged a stunning upset against the incumbent Democratic mayor, Yvonne Johnson. A political veteran, she was in her first term as mayor and has previously served on the city council. Republicans now hold a majority of seats on the officially nonpartisan Greensboro council for the first time.
Rounding out Election Day, voters in Lee County approved a quarter-cent sales tax 67 percent to 34 percent, making the county one of only a handful to approve the increase. Tuesday was the second time county leaders had put the tax on the ballot — voters shot it down once before in 2008.
Harnett County had the same quarter-cent sales tax on the ballot, but voters wanted no part of it and rejected the proposed increase for the second time.
In 2007, the General Assembly gave counties the option, with voter approval, of levying either the sales tax or a similar 0.4 percent land-transfer tax. Both options have failed nearly every time they’ve appeared on county ballots.
In the western part of the state, residents of Swannanoa voted 61 percent against incorporation, the argument against new taxes and for less government winning the day there.
David N. Bass is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.