Candidates for the District 11 Hamilton County Board of Education seat didn’t just set a record for raking in contributions for a school board seat. They obliterated the previous record.
The three candidates received a combined $105,960.59 for a post that pays around $12,000 a year.
Before this year, the most that had been contributed was a combined $70,477 for the two candidates in District 2 in 2020.
Both Democrat Jill Black, the winning District 11 candidate with 50.01% of the vote, and Republican Virginia Anne Manson, who finished second, also blew past the highest amount raised by one candidate in a local school board race. Black collected $48,555.59, while Manson picked up $52,795. Previously, the most received had been $39,575 by Republican Tom Decosimo in a losing bid in District 2 in 2020.
Before 2020, the races in the previous two cycles where the most combined money was raised by candidates was more than $34,000 in District 6 in 2018 and more than $33,000 in District 4 in 2016.