4th-grade teacher topples 3-term incumbent for a Tri-Cities school board seat
Amanda Brown has won election to the Pasco School Board, defeating three-term incumbent Steven Christensen.
Late votes trended in Brown’s favor after initial results on election night showed the race for the District 3 race was dead even.
By Monday, Brown was holding a 105-vote lead. A mandatory recount is unlikely.
Throughout all of Franklin County, there are only about 60 ballots left to tally. And there still may be a few votes left to count in District 3.
“It was a lot of hard work and I knew this was going to be an uphill challenge,” Brown told the Tri-City Herald on Tuesday morning.
Brown credits a robust door-knocking campaign for helping turn the tide. Even up until the evening before election day, she was out at homes talking to voters who hadn’t turned in their ballots yet. That last-ditch effort may have given her the upper hand.
“I was out every weekend since Labor Day and, especially this last week, I was out most weeknights,” she said.
The general election results will be certified Tuesday, Nov. 29.
Christensen, who works as a nuclear ventilation engineer at the Hanford nuclear reservation, has not conceded the race. He could not be reached by email Tuesday morning.
A close race
Brown leads the race with 51.3%, or 1,696 votes, to Christensen’s 48.1%, or 1,591 votes.
All seats on the Pasco School Board are up for re-election this year because of a new elections system that divided Pasco School District into four separate districts in which voters in those districts elect their own representative. Before this year, voters picked candidates in multiple school board races.
The school board decided to make the switch after seeing how litigation played out with the cities of Yakima and Pasco under the federal Voting Rights Act. The board learned that at-large voting systems can dilute the vote of Hispanic and Latino populations.
The new boundaries are defined by data from the 2020 U.S. Census.
District 3 is now one of two Latino-majority voting districts. Both candidates speak fluent Spanish.
While all seats were open, the Christensen-Brown race was the most competitive, with Brown raising nearly $7,500 in contributions, mostly from unions, and Christensen highlighting his robust involvement with the school board and his close ties to community partners.
Brown, a fourth-grade dual language teacher at Fuerza Elementary in Kennewick, highlighted the need to have a teacher’s perspective on the school board and said she would bring new ideas.
Pasco School Board members, who do not get paid, evaluate the district’s superintendent, adopt policies, monitor the district’s progress toward its goals and manage through the budgeting process millions in local, state and federal spending. All the positions are nonpartisan.
The next board also will be responsible for championing passage of a bond measure next February to build the district’s third comprehensive high school. Several candidates say its passage is essential to addressing overcrowding.
