Lane County Special Election results: Ballot measures, contested races
Register-Guard
As of noon Tuesday, the Lane County voter turnout was 21.32%, with 58,032 ballots counted.
The first round of Lane County May 18 Special Election unofficial results were released a little after 8 p.m. Tuesday with 56,969 ballots counted in the first round.
The Register-Guard is updating results Tuesday night for the ballot measures and contested candidate races as they are released.
Measures
Yes votes: 534
By Henry Houston and Taylor Perse
The May 18 special election didn’t have the national or state policy stakes of the two 2020 elections, but the results did bring some diversity to local education boards. From contested races for seats on the Lane Community College Board of Education to Eugene School District 4J and Springfield School District, it was an education-based election.
In Eugene School District 4J, Laural O’Rourke, a Black woman, won Position 2 by a landslide with 81 percent of the vote, defeating Harry Sanger who received 17 percent. In Position 6, Maya Rabasa, a woman of color, is the clear winner with 85 percent of the votes. Although Dakota James Boulette dropped out of the race, he still ended up with some votes.
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KLCC s Aubrey Bulkeley has details about the Lane Community College Board elections on May 18th.
Three of the four seats up for election on the Lane Community College Board have the potential to be held by someone who has never served on the Board before.
Credit Lane Community College
Two candidates are running uncontested. Austin Folnagy is seeking his first term on the board as the Zone 4 representative. Mike Eyster has served on the board since 2017 and is seeking re-election.
Incumbent Holli Johnson has two challengers. Thomas Jennings who works as an electrician. And Mark Boren who works for Lane Fire Authority and is current Board Chair for Fern Ridge School District.
As they say, all politics is local, and in Lane County, local politics gets heated when it’s school board elections.
The issues are huge in K-12 education racism and diversity, COVID, standardized testing and more. We are impressed by all the people willing to take on this tough and important duty. Good board members are simultaneously independent thinkers, willing to question how the board is voting and why, and yet also able to function effectively with other board members they may not always agree with to get things done.
It’s great when voters and candidates get fired up about the school board especially if it means positive changes for the kids. So knowing that Eugene and surrounding communities take their school boards seriously, our small editorial board Zoomed with as many candidates as we could, and sent surveys out to the ones who we either couldn’t squeeze in or who didn’t respond. Some candidates didn’t respond in time or at all.
Holli Johnson
Two candidates are challenging the newly appointed incumbent for the Lane Community College Board Zone 1 seat that represents West Eugene, Veneta and Florence. Holli Johnson was appointed March 3 to the board and is running to keep her seat. She is the first African American person on the board in the school’s half century of existence.
Johnson’s interest in community colleges began two decades ago, when she walked onto the campus at Santa Barbara City College and asked for help. “On that day,” she says, “I knew that I was going to work in financial aid and scholarships. So I went out in the community and helped every person I knew in my social circle apply for financial aid and taught them the ropes.”