Orange County school board, District 2 Democratic commissioner race primary results
Incumbent Phyllis Portie-Ascott defeated two opponents in Tuesday’s primary to become the Democratic nominee for Orange County District 2 commissioner.
In the Orange County Schools Board of Education race, two incumbent board members and a newcomer were elected to three seats. The results are unofficial until remaining absentee and provisional ballots are counted March 15.
District 2’s 18 precincts cover Hillsborough and rural Orange County. Portie-Ascott finished with 6,254 votes, or 72% of the total votes cast.
That was nearly 4,700 more votes than Horace Johnson Jr., who got 1,561 votes, or about 18% of the vote, and Adam Beeman, who got 835 votes, or nearly 10%.
Portie-Ascott, a real estate investor, was appointed to the board last year when former Commissioner Renee Price was elected to state House District 50 seat. She is the former first vice chair and acting chair of the Orange County Democratic Party; former president of the Northern Orange Black Voters Alliance; and former secretary of the Northern Orange NAACP, among other roles.
She will run against Republican nominee H. Nathan Robinson for the District 2 seat in the Nov. 2 general election.
Candidates for a single at-large seat and two District 1 seats were unopposed, which means incumbent Commissioners Jean Hamilton and Amy Fowler, along with newcomer Marilyn Carter, will be on the November ballot and installed on the newly constituted board in December.
Orange County Board of Education race
Incumbent members Carrie Doyle and Jennifer Moore were re-elected and will be joined by newcomer Wendy Padilla, with all 17 precincts reporting as of 10 p.m. in the nonpartisan Orange County Schools Board of Education race.
The race pitted Doyle, Moore and Padilla — all registered Democrats who supported former Superintendent Monique Felder’s focus on equity and “culturally diverse learning” — against three candidates who campaigned for a renewed focus on education in the 7,000-student district.
The latter group included Democratic incumbent Bonnie Hauser and unaffiliated newcomers Cindy Shriner and Michael N. Johnson, who had support from Friends of Orange County Schools, a bipartisan group that includes many former and current teachers and school administrators.
Although a website for the conservative New Group of Patriots initially “recommended” Hauser’s election, the group’s founder Robert Castona said that was a mistake by his staff. The recommendation was subsequently removed from the NGOP website.
Hauser came in fourth, with just 461 fewer votes than Moore.
That means Hauser could ask for a runoff, depending on the outcome of the March 15 official count, which will include 37 absentee ballots and 46 provisional ballots that have not been counted yet, said Orange County Elections Director Rachel Raper.
School board candidates have to receive at least 50% of the total votes cast for each seat to be elected, she explained, which in this race was at least 6,563 votes for each of the three winners. Moore was 66 votes shy of that threshold.
The seventh-place candidate in the race, Kevin Alston Jr., a Democrat, was the youngest and got support from the Northern Orange Black Voters Alliance.
Here are the results as of Wednesday morning:
- Carrie Doyle: 7,267
- Wendy Padilla: 6,668
- Jennifer Moore: 6,497
- Bonnie Hauser: 6,036
- Cindy Shriner: 5,759
- Michael N. Johnson: 5,323
- Kevin Alston Jr.: 1,716
This story was originally published March 5, 2024 at 8:05 PM.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported endorsements in the Orange County Schools Board primary by the New Group of Patriots. The organization did not endorse candidates in the race.
