Stevenson incumbents, ally defeat challengers

The campaign for seats on the Stevenson High School District 125 board was nasty, but three incumbents and their newcomer ally won big Tuesday.

With ballots in all 55 precincts counted, incumbents Bruce Lubin, Terry Moons and Merv Roberts and slate-mate David Weisberg finished far ahead of three challengers in a race for four seats on the school board.

“These results show that our residents support Stevenson and our kids and want to see Stevenson continue to be one of the best schools in the nation,” said Lubin, the board’s president.

Unofficial results showed: Weisberg led with 4,818 votes; Moons was second with 4,626 votes; Lubin was third with 4,611 votes; and Roberts was fourth with 4,500 votes.

Rounding out the pack, Kim Brady was fifth with 2,595 votes, Kathy Powell was sixth with 2,573 votes, and Cardella was last with 2,309 votes, unofficial results showed.

The candidates were split into two groups.

Lubin, Moons, Roberts and Weisberg ran together as one slate; Brady, Cardella and Powell united as an opposition group.

Lubins, Moons and Roberts are veteran incumbents who added Weisberg to their slate. They maintained the district is well-managed financially and continues to offer top-notch educational opportunities.

The opposition slate attacked the current board’s fiscal management, saying officials have collected too much in taxes and have wasted money through the years.

The challengers — some of whom were critical of books on Stevenson’s reading lists — also pushed to form a parental curriculum advisory group, a concept that has been rejected by the full board.

The incumbents and Weisberg took heat for an early campaign document that painted their rivals as “extremists” and “backward.” They said they didn’t follow that strategy, but some supporters did.