Newcomer enters race for seat on Muscogee County School Board

The day after Columbus learned the District 8 representative on the Muscogee County School Board won't seek re-election, a newcomer to local politics entered the race.

Wednesday, a St. Francis Avenue resident named David Merlin Wright filed with the Muscogee County Elections and Registrations Office a Declaration of Intent to accept contributions for a campaign to win the board’s District 8 seat. The Ledger-Enquirer hasn’t obtained any other information about Wright and hasn’t reached him for comment.

In a joint announcement Tuesday at the All On Georgia website, District 2 representative John Thomas wrote that he was speaking for Frank Myers of District 8 as he announced they won’t run for a second four-year term. Myers, a self-employed lawyer, and Thomas, an IRS agent, have been the nine-member board’s most outspoken critics of the Muscogee County School District administration.

Filing a DOI form allows someone to raise money for a political campaign, but no candidates officially are on the ballot until they qualify.

Qualifying for the 2018 local nonpartisan races runs from 9 a.m. March 5 until noon March 9. The deadline to register to vote in those elections is April 23. Advance in-person voting will be April 30 through May 18 in the City Services Center, 3111 Citizens Way. May 22 will be Election Day for those races.

The only other announced candidates for the school board this year are Kar-Tunes Car Stereo owner James “Bart” Steed, whom Thomas defeated in the four-way District 2 race during the 2014 election, and retired urologist Philip Schley, who served on the board for 21 years (1972-81 and 1998-2010), including as chairman for nine years, in District 8.

The other board seats up for election this year are District 4 (incumbent Naomi Buckner, a special-education teacher in Chattahoochee County), District 6 (incumbent and vice chairman Mark Cantrell, CEO of Action Buildings) and the board’s lone countywide seat (incumbent and chairwoman Kia Chambers, a real-estate broker). Buckner, Cantrell and Chambers haven’t announced their whether they will seek re-election.

This story was originally published January 25, 2018 at 10:43 AM with the headline "Newcomer enters race for seat on Muscogee County School Board."