March 1 has been set as the date for a special election to fill the vacant Area 1 seat on the Orange Unified School District Board of Education. Area 1 encompasses the Anaheim Hills portion of OUSD, and has been vacant since Trustee Diane Singer resigned in August when she moved to a new home in Area 5.
The election will be conducted entirely via vote-by-mail ballots; the estimated cost is between $326,000 and $385,000. Only two candidates filed to run: Gregory Salas and Andrea Yamasaki.
Drama has swirled around the vacancy almost from the get-go. After encouraging Chris Nguyen (an aide to Supervisor Todd Spitzer and political consultant who is a product of OUSD schools) to apply, the OUSD Board majority (except Alexia Deligianni) threw him under the bus in favor of Salas (a long-time friend of Trustee Tim Surridge).
This angered Singer and a group of OUSD parents who are active in ongoing efforts to pass a school facilities bond – they had supported Yamasaki’s application for appointment to the fill the vacancy. Singer subsequently led a successful signature-gathering campaign to nullify Salas’ appointment and force a special election.
The special election will, to an extent, serve as a proxy fight between this group and supporters of the conservative Board majority. It’s worth noting that both sides supported the Measure K school facilities bond that was narrowly defeated in 2016, and also support passing a school facilities bond next year.
The OUSD Board is elected on a from-district basis: trustees must live in a geographic Trustee Area, but are voted on by all OUSD registered voters – of whom there are 106,187.
The OC Registrar of Voters will mail ballots to all registered OUSD voters on February 1. Registrar Neal Kelley said voter participation in past similar elections has been around 25%, and he expects similar turnout for the Area 1 election.
This is not OC’s first all-mail ballot election: Seal Beach has conducted all-VBM elections for quite a while, and Buena Park held an all-VBM election in May 2015. The South Orange County Community College District held an all-VBM election in 2004.
Partisan Voter Breakdown
Unsurprisingly, the OUSD electorate is heavily Republican:
Salas is a Republican and Yamasaki is a Democrat, but it’s unclear what impact their party affiliations will have. Although the office is nominally non-partisan, a candidate’s party affiliation matters to a lot of voters; it gives them a good idea whether or not the candidate is in sync with their political views. At the same time, candidates don’t benefit or suffer unless that information is provided to more partisan voters.
The school unions will almost certainly support Yamasaki, but it’s unclear what the C GOP will do. The mishandling of the vacancy has created ill-feelings.
Stay tuned.
In God We Tust