61. Ida Wright wins Daytona-area school board seat primary

Ida Wright, shown  at far left,  wins the primary for the open dist. 2 seat on the Volusia County School Board,  before going on to win a Jan. 15 runoff with second place finisher Kathy Williams, shown in the inset. Her husband, Al Williams, was chairman of the school board before his passing in October.

DAYTONA BEACH -- With a mere 6 percent of the 66,166 registered voters taking part in the electoral process, a special primary in mid-December for the dist. 2 school board seat had one of the worst turnouts locally in modern times with only 3,390 bothering to vote.

Still, every vote cast matters and that's what put Daytona Beach resident and Bethune-Cookman University educator Ida Duncan Wright on top with 1,538 of those votes or 38.84 percent. Kathy Williams finished second with 1,023 votes or 25.83 percent to force a runoff election because Wright didn't quite reach the 50 percent-plus 1 threshold to win it outright.

The primary votes comes in at No. 61 in Headline Surfer's countdown of the top 100 local stories of 2012.

It paved the way for the district 2 voters from Daytona Beach, Daytona Beach Shores, South Daytona Ponce Inlet, and parts of Port Orange to go to the polls again in the Jan. 15 special election runoff where they chose Wright over Williams.

The special election was called for by Gov. Rick Scott after the Oct. 1 death of Williams' husband, Al Williams, who was chairman of the school board. He won re-election back in August over Wright.

The snapshot graphic here shows the results of the primary for the dist. 2 seat on the school board, with Ida Duncan Wright and Kathy Williams, finishing first and second, respectively, among five hopefuls.

Rounding out the field in the primary were Teresa Valdes of Daytona Beach Shores, whom some county GOP leaders thought might possibly sneak by Kathy Williams in the non-partisan contest because of her experience as a one-time statehouse candidate.

Though she finished third and out of the running this time around, Valdes nonetheless garnered a respectable 858 votes or 21.67 percent. Rounding out the primary field were Deborah Haigh Nader with 317 votes or 8.01 percent and Horace Anderson, Jr. with 224 votes or 5.6 percent of the total.

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