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How swiftly the fickle tides of election results swished, swayed and finally permanently switched directions in last night’s LAUSD School Board runoff election.
At 9:45, almost two hours after the polls closed in the District 1 South Los Angeles race, with barely more than the 17,000 mail-in ballots counted, the strongly favored George McKenna held a shaky 148-vote lead over the newcomer Alex Johnson.
Would the Johnson campaign’s tough charges – some said smears — against retired administrator Mr. McKenna trigger an unlikely upset?
Worried faces were as long as legs among the hundreds of McKenna supporters on the vast backlot of a Crenshaw Boulevard business.
No cause for fretting, it turned out.
A scant 90 minutes later, the 74-year-old Mr. McKenna, outspent 3 to 1 and outshouted at least 3 to 1, confidently was declaring victory – by a comfortable 53 to 47 percent margin.
He said his lifetime career in LAUSD persuaded voters to choose him over a 40-years-younger man who is not a professional educator and lacked a background in LAUSD.
They will do it all over again in 10 months – next June – when the future of the new McKenna seat and three others on the School Board will be determined by voters.
Hey, Buddy, Do You Have a Dime?
Even though more than $1 million was exploded by the two campaigns during the 70-day runoff – overwhelmingly more by the Johnson camp – the voter turnout was another embarrassment, 8 percent.
“The community won tonight, and they sent a message that District 1 is not for sale,” Mr. McKenna told his backers – jabbing back hard at the controversial strategy and tactics of Mr. Johnson, heavily backed by his boss, County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.
“I am honored to succeed my longtime friend and colleague, Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte” who died last Dec. 5, vacating the seat he had just claimed. She was a champion for children, and never can be replaced.”
Underlining his half-century career in Los Angeles education, as a teacher, principal, superintendent and administrator, he said that Tuesday was an important day for another reason, the start of a new school term.
Mr. McKenna talked about families sitting around the dinner table, energetically planning fresh adventures for the coming school year.
Once again, with a degree of nuance, he was drawing a bright line between his long life in education and Mr. Johnson’s asserted lack of familiarity with LAUSD’s many and varied working parts.
