Photo Credit: Sivan Veazie
There will be a number of very important races in this year’s election, ranging from the obvious (President and the US Senate) to local legislative races that may determine the partisan fate of the state of Arizona. One local race may have very significant ramifications but threatens to be lost in the pile of bigger ticket races however.
Scottsdale voters will vote to fill three seats in the Scottsdale Unified School District Governing Board, and as such will help craft the future of the district. In a surprising indicator of turnover, three incumbents (Julie Cieniawski, Zach Lindsay, and Libby Hart Wells) will not be pursuing re-election, leaving three open seats. Cieniawski is running for the County Board of Supervisors, but there has been precious little information as to why the other two are not running for re-election; perhaps the politicization of a non-political seat has grown tiresome.
While these elections are non-partisan in nature, battle lines have been drawn around familiar political leanings and slates of candidates have been formed on each side.
Mike Sharkey, Donna Lewis, and Matt Pittinsky are the candidates running as what could be considered a Democrat-adjacent slate, while Gretchen Jacobs, Jeanne Beasley, and Drew Hassler are running as what would be considered the Republican-adjacent slate.
Jacobs, Beasley and Hassler are running under the theme of “Just Be Honest”, pushing for education over activism and better engagement with parents. Sharkey, Lewis and Pittinsky’s theme is a bit more nebulous, in what seems to be a general satisfaction with the current status quo and to keep heading in the same direction.
And the status quo seems to be fairly popular in this case; that slate has some endorsements that bridge the partisan divide, including Paradise Valley Mayor Jerry Bien-Willmer and former Councilwoman Virginia Korte. The Just Be Honest slate doesn’t seem to bridge that divide with its endorsements.
In reality, this election seems to be lining up like the other city races: the Republican-adjacent candidates are devoted to convincing you that the city is going in the wrong direction, while the Democrat-adjacent candidates are fine with the general direction of the city. So the question for you, the voter, is which direction you think the city is going in. That alone may be enough to guide your choices.