HOLLISTER
The Hollister School District trustee race looks promising for Rebecca G. Salinas with 32.98 percent of the vote so far and Dee Brown with 27.5 percent – that’s with 40.5 percent of registered voters’ ballots tallied, according to unofficial election results.
Chuck Spandri, father of three Hollister children and a maintenance manager at Calpine’s Monterey Cogeneration facility in Watsonville, has so far come in third with 16.1 percent of the vote. Erin Gonzalez, local parent and an assessment editor at McGraw-Hill, is in fourth place with 12.56 percent.
Brandon Sowards, who told the Free Lance he “has no motivations for political gain from running and only the best interest of the students,” remains in fifth place in the district race, garnering 10.52 percent of the vote.
The county elections department will follow up by counting vote-by-mail ballots, which are expected to account for around 50 percent of total results. They will then complete a canvas of the vote after that count before making the results of the election official.
Salinas has been a Hollister resident for 28 years. She worked for 13 years at the Hollister district. So according to the candidate, she “knows its biggest problems.” It’s also Salinas’ goal, she noted, to improve the dropout rate among Hispanics.
Brown is a former Hollister trustee who was on the board from 1998 to 2006. She reports that she is “cautiously optimistic” about the results, noting that she is nearly 1,000 votes ahead.
“Until the last vote is counted, I won’t declare victory,” said Brown, who teaches at Chapman University in Monterey.
The vote counts are as follows:
Salinas: 2,796
Brown: 2,330
Spandri: 1,361
Gonzalez: 1,065
Sowards: 892
