St. Paul DFLers endorsed Mayor Melvin Carter's re-election bid plus the candidacies of three school board hopefuls in first-round results announced Wednesday.
The balloting, being conducted virtually this year due to the pandemic, now heads into a second round to determine if a fourth school board candidate can muster the 60% delegate support needed to win the party nod.
Carter, who faced no opposition for the endorsement, secured 89% of 513 ballots cast.
Voters will be electing four school board members in November — three to four-year terms and one to complete the remaining two years of the seat vacated this winter by former member Steve Marchese.
Clayton Howatt, a parent leader at Galtier Community School who helped save the school from closure, was the lone candidate for the two-year endorsement. He got 84% of the vote.
Two newcomers — Halla Henderson, youth programs manager at Minnesota Alliance With Youth, and Uriah Ward, a former middle school teacher who now serves as a financial aid counselor at Augsburg University — were endorsed for two of the three four-year seats.
Still vying for endorsement are Jim Vue, the school board's current vice chairman, and James Farnsworth, a member of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents who ran unsuccessfully for a St. Paul board seat a year ago.
Howatt, Henderson, Ward and Farnsworth were backed by the influential St. Paul Federation of Educators. Vue did not seek that group's endorsement after it rejected him a year ago for not supporting a moratorium on new or expanded charter schools.
Second-round balloting runs through Thursday.
Anthony Lonetree
