All three candidates who campaigned as \u201cstrong conservative voices\u201d won election to the board of the Conway School District Tuesday.<\/p>\n
School board races in Arkansas are nonpartisan, meaning candidates do not run under any political party\u2019s banner. Nothing, however, prevents them from describing themselves as conservatives, liberals, moderates or even apolitical.<\/p>\n
Reflecting a national trend, the board races were politicized along ideological lines more than any in Conway in recent memory. Three of the candidates ran as a team, with their campaign materials all sharing the words \u201cstrong conservative voices.\u201d \u00a0One candidate, Linda Hargis, also described herself as a \u201cpatriot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those defeated did not run on any partisan labels but clearly diverged from the conservatives on social issues.<\/p>\n
The unofficial results, complete except for some provisional ballots yet to be counted, according to the Faulkner County clerk\u2019s office:<\/p>\n
Zone One<\/p>\n
Amy Ferdowsian 1,060<\/p>\n
Jason Sandefer 1,287<\/p>\n
Zone Two<\/p>\n
Dr. David Naylor Jr. 2,008<\/p>\n
Carrie Tinsley 1,098<\/p>\n
Zone Three<\/p>\n
Diane Robinson 1,069<\/p>\n
Linda Hargis 1,185<\/p>\n
Candidates for the other zones ran unopposed except for Zone 5, which had no candidate. The incumbent did not file for re-election, and a person who did file later withdrew, county Clerk Margaret Darter said. That will leave six board members unless the one who didn\u2019t file, Scott Champlin, agrees to stay on the board.<\/p>\n
Lucas Harder, policy services director for the Arkansas School Board Association, said that under Article 19, Section 5 of the Arkansas Constitution, the board member is to
\nremain in office until his successor is elected and qualified. That person then is \u201ctreated as if they\u2019re elected to a new term,\u201d Harder said.<\/p>\n
Under Arkansas Statute 6-13-608, a person can serve only one full term as a \u201choldover\u201d before he or she must run for re-election or leave office, according to Harder.<\/p>\n
If that person doesn\u2019t want to stay in office or can\u2019t do so and leaves the board, he or she can submit a resignation and the board will have 30 days to appoint someone to serve a one-year term, Harder said.<\/p>\n
The winners will be sworn in after votes are certified Friday.<\/p>\n
The Conway school district has a total of 9,818 students, according to its website.<\/p>\n
Janine A. Parry, a political science professor and Arkansas poll director at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, said Wednesday that one reason all three \u201cconservatives\u201d won is that \u201cprimaries tend to attract more partisan folks or the strongest partisans, so that\u2019s going to be one of the consequences of changing school board elections to coincide with all the partisan positions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to get higher turnouts, but those folks also are going to be more partisan also by definition. That\u2019s not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, but it\u2019s going to change the character of the average voter\u201d in a school-board election, Parry said.<\/p>\n
But with vote totals in locally zoned races already relatively small, \u201cit\u2019s just not hard to mobilize a couple dozen extra people or a couple hundred and change the outcome of the election,\u201d Parry said. \u201cIt\u2019s not that hard to upend these things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because of state legislation approved in 2017, school board races in Arkansas now must take place either at the same time as general or preferential primary elections, or, in non-election years, on one of those equivalent dates. In the past, they were in September and generally had low voter turnouts.<\/p>\n
Name recognition can always be a big election factor and might explain why Naylor, a physician who\u2019s part of an established family medical practice in Conway, won by a bigger margin than did the other two conservative candidates.<\/p>\n
\u201cA familiar name rises to the top as one of the \u2026 clues people will use when there aren\u2019t other clues on the ballot,\u201d Parry said. \u201cIf you\u2019re already a well-established person or have the same last name as a well-established person, that\u2019s going to work to your benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Further, Naylor got his name in education circles months ago. In January, he was among 13 Conway physicians who signed a letter urging the school board to allow protective masks to be optional, not mandatory, during the pandemic. The board voted 6-1 to require masks, in line with a recommendation from a group of other physicians and the president and chief executive officer of Conway Regional Health System. The mask mandate has since ended.<\/p>\n
Further, without using the word \u201cmasks,\u201d Naylor also evoked their image in his campaign announcement published in Conway\u2019s The Log Cabin Democrat last month when he said, \u201cI believe, after the last 2 years of a pandemic, it would be beneficial to have a physician on the school board.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unlike some other physician offices in Conway, the Banister-Lieblong Clinic where Naylor works no longer requires masks.<\/p>\n
Naylor did not return a phone message seeking comment on an earlier article previewing the election. Asked if he would like to comment Tuesday night for this article while he was at the courthouse to hear election results, he indicated he preferred to wait.<\/p>\n
Hargis, a former teacher and school administrator, posted a statement on her campaign Facebook page Tuesday night thanking her supporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been an eye-opening journey to say the least.\u201d she wrote. \u201cI will do my best to represent the values that you have entrusted in me!! I will work hard for the schoolchildren entrusted in our care as a school district.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sandefer, a Conway businessman, did not reply to a Facebook message seeking comment.<\/p>\n
Even after losing her re-election bid, Diane Robinson continued her habit of posting positive news about students and faculty on a Facebook page she devotes to school board matters. On Wednesday, she posted videos of one of the district\u2019s employees of the year and of the District Teacher of the Year, Hailey Carr.<\/p>\n
And early Tuesday evening, just before Robinson posted the results of absentee and early voting, in which she trailed, Robinson, a senior court research associate who has
\nworked as a child advocate, took time for a far more important message relating to the Texas school shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead.<\/p>\n
She wrote: \u201cOur core value: maintain a safe and caring environment. At the end of the day, parents expect their children to come home from school safe and sound. What
\nhappened in Uvalde today \u2026would be unimaginable, if we hadn\u2019t seen it before. We heard one of the Sandy Hook parents speak at a National School Board Association
\nconference and she said your safety strategy cannot be: Not Here.<\/p>\n
You cannot assume it won\u2019t happen in your district. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve made safety improvements, both in terms of 'hardening' the entrances to our schools and having
\ndetailed response plans specific to each of our campuses. It also includes making sure we identify and get services for students with mental health problems. Parents, if you
\nhave guns in your home, do not assume that your children don\u2019t know where they are or how to access them. Make sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
This story is courtesy of the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network, an independent, nonpartisan news project dedicated to producing journalism that matters to Arkansans.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" All three candidates who campaigned as \u201cstrong conservative voices\u201d won election to the board of the Conway School District Tuesday. School board races in Arkansas are nonpartisan, meaning candidates do not run under any political party\u2019s banner. Nothing, however, prevents them from describing themselves as conservatives, liberals, moderates or even apolitical. Reflecting a national trend, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":23069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[256],"tags":[481],"class_list":["post-23072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-conway-school-district"],"yoast_head":"\n