With about 20,900 votes in Tuesday's primary election, newcomer Ric Cavender won a seat on the Kanawha County school board, while incumbent board member Jim Crawford won re-election with the second-highest vote total, at 15,300.
Four men ran for the two board seats up for grabs in this election. The two losing candidates were retired longtime construction manager Bill Carpenter - who self-funded his campaign and, as of his most recent campaign finance filing, had spent only $45 - and former Charleston city councilman Adam Knauff.
Carpenter still managed to get more votes than Knauff, at 10,800 to Knauff's 10,400. During the campaign, Knauff denounced the current school board's record while his three competitors had little to no criticism.
Knauff also criticized Cavender on issues like Cavender's support for hiring a school system spokesperson if the county's budget situation improves.
"It's evident that the public at large does not respond to negative campaigning," Cavender, executive director of the Charleston Main Streets economic and community development organization, said Tuesday night. He attributed his success to a positive campaign and voters who wanted someone on the board who has direct, daily experience working with business owners.
Cavender, 33, said the school board seems to have operated professionally over the past several years.
"The last thing we want to see is a change in perception - that the school board is a war room," he said.
Candidates in the nonpartisan school board race have no general election. Cavender and Crawford will take office July 1, the start of Kanawha County's next fiscal year.
Board President Robin Rector decided not to run for re-election, meaning at least one newcomer was going to join the five-member board. The only other incumbent board member whose seat was up for grabs this election was Crawford, who was seeking another four-year term after serving 16 years on the board.
Crawford, 79, said he served 39 years as a Kanawha teacher, and when his new term is up he'll have served 20 years on the board. He didn't rule out seeking yet another term that would bring him close to a quarter century in the office.
When asked how he's been able to stay on the board so long, he said "I've been a team player, and I think I do things for people, and I do what's right for children."
In his next four years, he said he wants to work on dealing with the school system's continuing budget issues, improve test scores in West Side schools and push on with the Learning 20/20 initiative that has put tablet computers in the hands of every public middle and high school student in the county.
Asked about Knauff's criticism of the board, he noted that Knauff received fewer votes than Carpenter, who Crawford said essentially didn't campaign.
"All I can say is the voters made the decision for us," Carpenter said. "Who was right and who was wrong."
According to the latest campaign finance reports, Cavender appears to have been the highest fundraiser for the election, with monetary and in-kind donations totaling about $16,000. Crawford, who said he didn't request donations but regardless received them from several individuals and the Kanawha branch of the American Federation of Teachers union, raised about $3,800, while Carpenter spent $25 on the filing fee and $20 on business cards.
Knauff showed $4,000 in fundraising in a campaign report submitted around the end of March, but as of Tuesday the Kanawha Election Center website showed that, unlike his competitors, he hadn't submitted a second report due in the last week of April.
Cavender picked up contributions from many relatively well-known Charleston and political names, including several people who are on the board of directors of Charleston Main Streets, which employs Cavender.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.