Peter Maier falls behind challenger Sharon Peaslee in key Seattle school board race

It looks like anoth­er incum­bent school board mem­ber may end up get­ting oust­ed by Seat­tle vot­ers, after it ini­tial­ly appeared that only one would lose his job.

Though he was able to main­tain an edge in the con­test for school board direc­tor in Dis­trict #1 for near­ly a week, incum­bent Peter Maier is now in seri­ous dan­ger of los­ing his seat. Today, he relin­quished the lead to chal­lenger Sharon Peaslee, who has claimed a sur­pris­ing­ly large share of the late ballots.

Peaslee is now nine­ty-one votes ahead of Maier, after hav­ing trailed by two thou­sand, nine hun­dred and nine­ty-two votes only a week ago.

If she pre­vails, she will join fel­low chal­lenger Mar­ty McLaren on the Seat­tle School Board. (McLaren is now well ahead of incum­bent Steve Sundquist after claim­ing an ear­ly lead on elec­tion night, and is the like­ly vic­tor in the race for Dis­trict #6.)

The two oth­er incum­bents who sought reelec­tion this year, Sher­ry Carr and Har­i­um Mar­tin-Mor­ris, appear to have been reelect­ed to new terms, though Car­r’s lead over chal­lenger Kate Mar­tin has shrunk sig­nif­i­cant­ly since last week.

Maier and Sundquist’s depar­ture would sig­nif­i­cant­ly alter the com­po­sure of the board, which has made a num­ber of bad deci­sions in recent years.

Maier and Sundquist pro­vid­ed two of the five votes in July of 2010 to extend the con­tract of ex-Super­in­ten­dent Maria Good­loe John­son, who the board unan­i­mous­ly oust­ed this last spring after it was dis­cov­ered that her admin­is­tra­tion had failed to pre­vent three dis­trict offi­cials from steal­ing a quar­ter of a mil­lion dol­lars from the dis­trict. (King Coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors have charged the three peo­ple respon­si­ble with felony theft; two of them have plead­ed not guilty).

Maier and Sundquist also refused to help pro­tect a grove of trees at Ingra­ham High School, which the school dis­trict chopped down after a pro­tract­ed fight with the neigh­bor­ing com­mu­ni­ty, led by NPI board mem­ber Steve Zemke.

Well-known Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton mete­o­rol­o­gist Cliff Mass is among those who cam­paigned active­ly for Maier’s defeat. In a post pub­lished to his weath­er blog on Octo­ber 22nd, Mass sum­ma­rized the con­test between the two as fol­lows:

Peter is clear­ly the weak­est of the board mem­bers and was the mem­ber who knew about the finan­cial prob­lems and kept qui­et about it. Did­n’t seem to care about math edu­ca­tion. Rub­ber-stam­per. I have known Sharon Peaslee for years.  She has a real back­ground in edu­ca­tion, has kids in the schools, and has worked active­ly for improved math edu­ca­tion. Sharon is strong-willed and will ask the hard ques­tions.  She is sup­port­ed by The Stranger and most of the local Demo­c­ra­t­ic orga­ni­za­tions, as well as Seat­tle teach­ers. Peter has a huge finan­cial war chest and is run­ning a huge num­ber of adver­tise­ments. Let’s hope that mon­ey does­n’t decide this race.

Maier still has a chance to win, but Peaslee seems to have sol­id and steady momen­tum. If the trend we’ve been see­ing con­tin­ues, Maier will be join­ing Sundquist in exit­ing the school board at year’s end.