Pasco school incumbent is trailing by 3 votes. 2 other races aren’t close

Incumbents running for the Pasco School Board were in the lead Tuesday night, except for Steven Christensen.

The three-term incumbent was trailing challenger Amanda Brown, a Kennewick teacher who lives in Pasco, by just three votes.

Brown stood at 49.79%, or 1,320 votes. Christensen has 49.68%, or 1,317 votes.

More voting results were expected late Wednesday.

“Leads don’t get much smaller than three votes, but I’m remaining optimistic,” Brown told the Tri-City Herald on Wednesday morning.

Brown said the dead-heat ballot totals were the result of weeks of door knocking and campaigning.

The race could be headed to a mandatory recount after certification if late votes don’t produce a clear winner.

A mandatory recount is required under state law when the difference in vote totals between two general election candidates is both fewer than 2,000 votes and less than one-half percent of the total number of votes cast for both candidates.

The two are battling for the District 3 position on the Pasco School Board, which includes downtown and larges swaths of southeast Pasco.

It’s one of the school board’s few Hispanic-majority voting districts, where about 2,651 votes have been tallied so far.

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 elect their own representative to the school board. Before this year, voters voted in every school board race.

It’s unclear how many votes are left to to be counted in the Pasco districts. A new ballot count is expected Wednesday evening.

In District 4, which encompasses large areas of Franklin County and north Pasco, incumbent Amy Phillips was winning in a landslide.

She had 78.5%, or 3,754 votes, to Trevor Crosby’s nearly 21%, or 1,003 votes. That’s a 2,700-vote lead.

Incumbent Steve Simmons, who was elected last year to the school board, was fending off challenger Stella Trevino for the only at-large seat.

Simmons had 60%, or 7,347 votes. Trevino had 38%, or 4,683 votes.

Both Scott Lehrman and John Kennedy are running unopposed in District 1 and District 2.

The Franklin County canvassing board will certify the Nov. 8 election results Nov. 29.

Winners will be sworn in at the Dec. 13 school board meeting and will serve staggered terms, ranging from one to three years. A normal term for a school board member is four years.