Here’s a breakdown of the two school board runoffs

Tuesday’s voting decided only two of the four seats up for election on the nine-member Muscogee County School Board. Runoffs on July 26 will determine the winners in District 1 and District 7 because no candidate received a majority of the votes in the three-way races.

Here’s an analysis of what this first round of voting tells us about what to expect in the final one, according to unofficial results that won’t be finalized until the Muscogee County Board of Elections meets Friday.

District 1

Pat Hugley Green, a three-term incumbent, is the board’s vice chairwoman and chairs the finance committee. She received 46.62 percent of the vote. Retired educator and political newcomer JoAnn Thomas-Brown earned a place in the runoff by finishing second in the three-way race with 29.95 percent. Al Stewart, another retired educator, came in third with 23.35 percent. There were two write-in votes.

Stewart lost to Green four years ago, when she collected 55 percent of the votes.

Green won the majority of votes this year in only two of the district’s eight precincts: Carver/Mack with 53.56 percent and Cusseta Road with 52.22 percent. So most of the voters in three-fourths of the precincts chose to oust her from the board, but could agree on who should replace her.

Nonetheless, Green won a plurality in every precinct. The closest any challenger came to beating her in a precinct was at Gentian/Reese, where she received 39.62 percent to Thomas-Brown’s 31.13 percent and Stewart’s 29.25 percent.

Thomas-Brown’s strongest support came at Fort/Waddell, where she attracted 39.39 percent of the vote. Green, however, held her off there with 46.67 percent.

Regardless of how folks voted in District 1, the question of whether they voted leaves plenty of possible support for Green or Thomas-Brown up for grabs. Among the 11,538 registered voters in the district, 2,703 (23 percent) of them cast a ballot and 2,651 of them made a selection in this race.

Green is a licensed insurance agent and student mentor coordinator at the office of State Farm insurance agent and state Rep. Carolyn Hugley (D-Columbus), her sister-in-law. She also is chief administrative officer for Hugley’s Facility Management Janitorial Service, and she is the sister of Columbus City Manager Isaiah Hugley.

Thomas-Brown served 36 years as an educator in the Muscogee County School District. Then-superintendent John Phillips removed her as principal at Baker Middle School because of its poor academic performance. She retired in 2007 as a behavioral specialist at the Woodall Center.

She now is chief executive officer of B&O Services, a group home for the intellectually disabled. Baker still is on the state’s list of chronically failing schools.

District 7

One-term incumbent Shannon Smallman, a real estate broker, didn’t run for re-election. She instead is managing the campaign to return Cathy Williams to the school board.

After serving on the board for eight years, including two as chairwoman, Cathy Williams didn’t seek re-election to the nine-member board’s lone at-large seat in 2014. Two years later, she said she wasn’t satisfied with the choices in District 7 so she qualified as a candidate. She is president and CEO of NeighborWorks Columbus, which promotes and provides access to fit and affordable housing.

Now, she is in a runoff against political newcomer Shelia Williams, executive director of B&O Services, the group home for the intellectually disabled where Thomas-Brown is the CEO.

Cathy Williams, the wife of Ledger-Enquirer senior reporter Chuck Williams, received 46.04 percent of the District 7 votes. Shelia Williams got 32.91 percent and former board member Norene Marvets, co-owner of John Paul’s Jewelers, got 21.06 percent. No write-in votes were cast.

Cathy Williams received a majority of the votes in three of the district’s seven precincts (Columbus Tech with 66.67 percent, First African with 63.54 percent and Wynnton with 57.39 percent) and a plurality of the votes in two more (Gallops/Hannan with 47 percent and Epworth with 40 percent).

Shelia Williams collected the plurality of votes in two precincts (Cusseta Road with 47.89 percent and Eddy/Key with 36.71 percent). She has been a team leader and support coordinator for Columbus Community Services, an online adjunct criminal justice instructor for Troy University at Fort Benning, and a lead teacher for Easter Seals of West Georgia.

As the two Williams candidates compete during the next nine weeks in the runoff campaign, they also could find more support among residents who didn’t bother to vote. Out of the 8,410 registered voters in the district, 1,208 (14 percent) cast a ballot and 1,173 made a selection in this race.

All of which means voter turnout will be key in these two runoffs.

This story was originally published May 25, 2016 at 3:23 PM with the headline "Here’s a breakdown of the two school board runoffs."