2 votes separate final school board contenders as leaders pull away

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Jim Jordan talks to voters going into a polling station on Election Day. Photo by Raquel Hendrickson

 

Every vote counts, today no more so than in the race for Maricopa Unified School District Governing Board.

While veteran members Torri Anderson and AnnaMarie Knorr are well on their way to re-election, only two votes separate the two candidates vying for the third available seat. And more votes may not be recorded for another day.

According to Pinal County Elections Department, there are 41,000 early ballots and 1,800 provisional ballots left to be processed. There is no expected update until Thursday. It is unknown how many of the untallied ballots are from Maricopa.

That leaves incumbent Jim Jordan and challenger Tracie Armstead-Payton on pins and needles.

During the vote count Tuesday night, Armstead-Payton carried a slim lead over Jordan, who was appointed to the board last year. By night’s end, however, Jordan led 8,717 to 8,715.

“Well, it’s close,” Jordan said. “We’ll just have to wait and see because otherwise I might have to eat words. And those are not tasty.”

He said it is hard to make any judgment on the process at the moment and would not mind if a recount was ultimately triggered, if it was closely observed. Jordan said he walked seven miles Monday distributing literature.

“I put effort into it,” he said. “You can’t go back and change anything now. You just have to count them.”

Armstead-Payton said she was initially excited and then cautiously exited when early returns showed up. She was texted early in the morning about the shifting vote count, that Jordan had overcome a gap of more than 500 votes.

“Then I’m looking at it more closely and seeing there’s a two-vote difference here,” she said. “I was like, ‘OK. Well, this is really getting interesting.'”

As the voting stands now, Anderson is the top vote-getter with 10,540. She leads in all but one precinct. Knorr, the current president of the board, is just behind her with 10,132.

Anderson said she felt humbled by the results.

“I am so excited,” she said. “I love this community, and it just makes me humbled and honored to be able to serve again. To be able to have the community support me like this means more than anything else.”

She said she looks forward to getting back to work on issues that concern her. That includes retaining quality staff especially through the unknowable fallout of COVID-19, which has been challenging to the teaching staff.

“Part of it is listening to the teachers and taking their ideas and suggestions and valuing them as a professional,” Anderson said. “They’re the educators. The board members are not educators.”

COVID-19 was also a challenging element of the campaign as candidates were not able to be in front of voters as much as usual.

“I learned a lot about how to be creative,” Anderson said. “I learned a lot more about nurturing relationships. I felt I always had great relationships, but this has shown me that, over the years, just valuing our community and putting in the work and respecting those around me, setting an example for excellence, that showed me those relationships are timeless and more important than ever.”