Blumenfeld ’13 locked in close school-board race

Andrew Blumenfeld ’13, who is running for a position on the La Canada Unified School District governing board, is 12 votes behind incumbent Jeanne Broberg as of Wednesday night in the election that took place on Tuesday.

The two candidates with the highest number of votes will be elected to the school board. The front-runner, Ellen Multari, leads by 243 votes. The second-place position, however, is still undetermined as additional votes need to be tallied.

During the next few days election officials will count the remaining votes, which include last-minute absentee ballots and provisional ballots that must be hand-counted because they were submitted at the wrong location or were from first-time voters.

“We will be making sure that every provisional ballot is counted, all last-minute mail-in ballots are counted and that all counted votes are accurately tallied,” Blumenfeld said on his Facebook campaign page in response to the closeness of the race.

Before the initial absentee ballots were tabulated, Blumenfeld led Broberg by around 200 votes, he told The Daily Princetonian, but the first round of absentee ballots closed the gap. Of the remaining votes, however — especially the provisional ballots — Blumenfeld said he is hopeful that they were cast for him in larger numbers because of his initial performance in the polls.

According to Blumenfeld, while absentee ballots will be counted by the end of this week, provisional ballots, which must be counted by hand, will be counted over the course of next week, with updates coming on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The final, certified results will not be released until 30 days after the election.

Blumenfeld explained that his platform focused on “policies that are student-centered ... in the interests of students and parents that aren’t compromised by an insistence on the status quo.” If elected, Blumenfeld will serve a four-year term and said he plans to fly to La Canada each month to attend school board meetings.

Broberg, who is running for her second term on the school board, prioritizes “outstanding teachers and administrators,” “prudent budgeting” and “appropriate class size” in her campaign, according to her website, where she notes the LCUSD’s achievement of a second-place ranking on the Academic Performance Index as one of the highlights of her tenure.

Blumenfeld stressed that, regardless of the way the election went, he felt that his campaign achieved its intended goal and “sent a clear message to the board and community ... that there is a new demand in town that I hopefully will rise to meet.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Blumenfeld told the Glendale News-Press that he would make a formal request for a recount if the closeness of the race did not automatically prompt such an action.