With all voting precincts reporting and 65 percent of the ballots counted countywide, Thomas Arnett holds a steady lead in the race for an open seat on the Morgan Hill Unified School District board of education.
As of 8 a.m. June 8, Arnett tallied about 53 percent, or 4,903 of the votes cast in the June 7 election, according to returns from the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters office. Pam Torrisi had about 47 percent of the votes. A total of 9,276 votes have been cast in the race for former MHUSD Trustee Amy Porter Jensen’s seat on the board.
The winner of the seat will complete Porter Jensen’s unfinished four-year term on the board, which ends in December. An election for a four-year board member for the same seat will take place in November.
Arnett, 31, is an education researcher for the nonprofit think tank Clayton Christensen Institute. He attended San Martin/Gwinn Elementary, Britton Middle School and Live Oak High School.
Torrisi, 64, is a retired MHUSD paraeducator of 34 years and a former classified union president. She is also a Live Oak alumna.
Starting with the November election, the board will switch to by-district voting, in which candidates must reside in the geographical area within MHUSD’s area they hope to represent. Torrisi currently resides in the MHUSD district that the open seat represents, whereas Arnett does not.
The MHUSD board consists of seven elected trustees. The new voting system that takes effect in November divides MHUSD boundaries into seven areas, each represented by a separate trustee.
In other local races in the June 7 presidential primary election, Santa Clara County’s Measure A for the continuation for Parks Charter funding appears to have won a solid victory with 77 percent of votes tallied so far in support of the parcel tax. More than 203,000 voters have balloted in favor of the existing property tax which will fund the maintenance, operation and acquisition of property for local parks. Nearly 60,000 balloters have voted against the measure.
Local results of the June 7 primary, which included the presidential primary as well as statewide and regional races, can be viewed on the Registrar’s website at sccgov.org.
