Orange County voters fill last seat in contested school board race after runoff
Voters gave Bonnie Hauser a second term Tuesday on the Orange County Board of Education after a contested runoff against a former fellow board member.
Hauser finished the second election with 2,512 votes while Jennifer Moore received 1,428 votes, according to unofficial results from the state Board of Elections. All 17 precincts reported results.
Moore resigned her board seat in mid-April after questions were raised about whether she has a doctorate. But her name remained on the May 14 runoff ballot, which already had been printed and mailed to absentee voters.
Early results Tuesday showed Moore won the absentee vote by a 3-1 margin. Hauser surged ahead in early voting results and early returns from Tuesday’s runoff election.
Just under 6% of the 71,927 registered voters in the Orange County Schools district cast ballots.
Last month, Moore cited “medical concerns” for her decision to resign in her April 17 email to board and district officials. The email was sent after The News & Observer called Moore about her reported doctorate from Bellevue University in Nebraska.
Bellevue University officials told The N&O they did not have a record of a student named Jennifer Denise Moore.
Moore posted a letter on her campaign website April 23 accepting “responsibility for not clarifying that I do not have a Ph.D.”
Why was a runoff necessary?
A state law enacted in 1977 set a threshold for victory by dividing the total number of votes cast by the number of open seats, and then dividing that number by two. The required threshold in the March election was 6,588 votes.
Moore came in third after incumbent board member Carrie Doyle and newcomer Wendy Padilla in the race for three seats, but she was 60 votes short of the threshold to win under state law.
Hauser, who came in fourth place with 482 fewer votes than Moore, sought a runoff.
Hauser will be sworn in to serve a four-year term in July, along with Doyle and Padilla.
This could be the last Orange County school board election held under those rules.
Democratic state Sen. Graig Meyer, who lives in Orange County, filed a bill this month that would change how winners are chosen in the nonpartisan Orange County Schools Board of Education race.
If Meyer’s bill becomes law, winners would be determined starting in 2026 by who gets the most votes.
If Moore had won Tuesday, she said on her now-defunct campaign website that she would not return to the board.
