Voters who live in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District on Tuesday have likely re-elected board members Laurie Lieberman and Oscar de la Torre as well as two new faces: Richard Tahvildaran-Jesswein and Craig Foster.
The results are still unofficial with the Santa Monica City Clerk’s office waiting on votes by mail. The winners will not be known until the canvass of returns is completed on Dec. 2, 2014.
If the preliminary results hold, incumbent Ralph Mechur will have failed to reclaim his seat despite serving on the board since 2007. He finished a close fifth just 264 votes behind de la Torre.
Board member Nimish Patel chose not to seek re-election this year.
According to results posted on the LA County Registrar’s Office, Lieberman finished first place out of the seven candidates after all 75 voting precincts and absentee ballots were counted at 3:11 am Wednesday. She collected 11,336 votes (20.78 percent).
Foster, the only Malibu resident candidate this election, finished second with 9,087 votes (16.66 percent), Tahvildaran-Jesswein third with 9,061 votes (16.61 percent), and de la Torre fourth with 8,795 votes (16.12 percent).
Of the three other candidates, Mechur finished fifth with 8,531 votes (15.64 percent), Dhun May finished sixth with 3,889 votes (7.13 votes), and Patty Finer finished seventh with 3,857 votes (7.07 percent).
Foster becomes Malibu’s first resident representative on the Board of Education in six years (Kathy Wisnicki decided not to run for a second term in 2008).
