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DEL.ICIO.USEast Cobb runoff coming for school board
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
School board member Kathie Johnstone and Baptist minister John Crooks are headed for a runoff in the east Cobb Post 6 Republican primary.
With 30 of 31 precincts reporting, Crooks led Johnstone 3393 to 2155 in a four-person field.
Crooks and Johnstone strongly outdistanced two other Republican challengers, attorney Randy Turner who took 1271 votes and engineer Al Rowe with 824.
Most election watchers expected the race to end up in a runoff on Aug. 8. To avoid a runoff the winner must take 50 percent, plus-one vote.
Crooks had 44.3 percent to Johnstone’s 28.2 percent. The winner of the runoff will take on Democrat Beth Farokhi in the November general election in the heavily Republican district.
Crooks ran an aggressive campaign to unseat Johnstone, a one-term incumbent who championed a failed take-home laptop program for all middle and high school students. The courts ruled that the board’s attempt to spend sales-tax dollars on laptops was illegal because it was not what it had promised taxpayers.
Crooks slammed Johnstone with the laptop issue and other board controversies that have beset the school district in recent months, including: a west Cobb school redistricting initially based on racial balancing, “evolution is a theory” stickers on textbooks, and a school district that has landed on the state’s “Needs Improvement” list two years in a row.
Johnstone campaigned on her experience and the district’s improved test scores.
“We’ve kind of thought there would be a runoff all along. It looks like it’s going to be a long summer. I’m just going to continue to run an ethical, hard race and keep children first,” Johnstone said.
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