With the bulk of absentee ballots counted, the three incumbent Republican Cobb County School Board members are maintaining their leads in the Nov. 3 election.
Randy Scamihorn, Brad Wheeler and David Banks are fighting off their Democratic challengers to win re-election, according to unofficial results updated Wednesday.
Scamihorn’s lead over Vickie Benson is about 7,300 votes, while Wheeler leads Lindsay Terrebonne by nearly 1,800 votes. Banks leads Julia Hurtado by roughly 2,700 votes.
Cobb County on Wednesday had about 15,000 absentee ballots to be counted, and all but 700 of those ballots had been tabulated by around 8:15 p.m., said Janine Eveler, Cobb’s election director.
The remaining ballots will be counted Thursday, she said. Provisional ballots, votes cast by military and overseas residents and any ballots with missing or mismatched signatures that have been verified with an affidavit will be processed Friday, Eveler said.
Democrat Leroy Hutchins did not have a Republican challenger in his bid to succeed outgoing incumbent David Morgan, the longtime Democratic school board member who did not seek another term in office.
The school board has been divided along party lines since 2019 when two Democrats, Dr. Jaha Howard and Charisse Davis, joined Morgan and the four Republicans — Banks, Scamihorn, Wheeler and David Chastain. The board is also divided along racial lines; the four Republicans are white and the Democrats are Black.
These divisions became apparent when board members voted along racial and party lines to end board member comments, rejected the nomination of Davis, a Black woman, to serve as board chair in January and did not approve a resolution denouncing racism.
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