- Mary Lord wins at-large seat on D.C. education board
Mary Lord wins at-large seat on D.C. education board
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
November 7, 2012
Mary Lord appears to have easily won the at-large seat on the District’s State Board of Education, defeating parent activist Marvin Tucker.
With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Lord, who represents Ward 2 on the nonpartisan board, had won 64 percent of the vote. The results are unofficial and do not include provisional or absentee ballots.
The so-called state board sets citywide academic standards and other policies, including teacher licensure and graduation requirements.
In Ward 8, incumbent Trayon White cruised to victory over challenger Philip Pannell with more than 72 percent of the vote — a win not just for White but also for his political patron, D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8).
The Ward 7 incumbent, Dorothy Douglas, did not prevail. She was defeated by challenger Karen Williams, head of an early childhood education center. Williams won 41 percent of the vote to Douglas’s 28 percent.
Two other races were uncontested: Jack Jacobson in Ward 2, who will take over Lord’s seat, and incumbent D. Kamili Anderson in Ward 4.
The race for the state board is among the lower-profile contests in the city, with many voters unsure of exactly what the board does — and doesn’t — do. While more than 240,000 D.C. voters turned out, fewer than 185,000 of them voted in the at-large school board race.
“I didn’t pay any attention to that,” said a mother of two charter school students who voted at Orr Elementary in Ward 8. “I didn’t feel it had anything to do with me.”