Election results: Ted Alejandre reelected in San Bernardino County superintendent race
San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools Ted Alejandre secured a third term as de facto leader of the 400,000-students countywide school system.
With 100% of precincts reporting, Alejandre had accrued 64.7% of the vote or 66,998 votes, compared to just 36,494 votes or 35.3% for his challenger, county Board of Education president and High Desert charter-school advocate Ken Larson.
Larson provided Alejandre his first electoral opponent since the incumbent first won the superintendent job in 2014, with his second race in 2018 being unopposed.
Local results: 2022 Victorville-Area Election Numbers
This time around, Alejandre wielded a much larger campaign treasure chest, endorsement list and social media presence than Larson, who hinged his challenger campaign on an appetite among small schools, fed-up parents, and politically-frustrated citizens more broadly to see change in the current trajectory of K-12 education.
The incumbent pitched voters on his role as an efficient and open-minded middle man for county residents, local officials, and state and federal agencies, specifically through the shake-ups, mandates and tech-focused changes in schooling since the pandemic emerged.
“With speed and efficiency, we were able to implement a robust testing and vaccination program for our students, staff and community,” Alejandre told the Daily Press last month, adding that county Office of Education “served as a conduit for the delivery of PPE and test kits from (the state Department of Education) to our schools. We also launched distance learning education modules and resources as well as supplied students with laptops and hotspots.”
Larson is the principal of “non-classroom based” charter school Alta Vista Innovation High School, which is technically based in Hesperia but is accredited with 16 other campuses in places as far as Los Angeles and Riverside.
He took a populist tenor in this election with a platform of bolstered financial security, transparency and direct assistance to help schools “keep up with the myriad of changes that are just perpetuated by Sacramento on what seems like a daily basis,” as he described it to the Daily Press.
As of last month, the Alejandre for Superintendent 2022 campaign had raised about $121,000 from cash contributions since launching in mid-2018, when it started with almost $135,000 of cash, according to county Registrar of Voters disclosures. It had spent about $123,000 in the same time, with 68% of that spending occurring this year on items including campaign business cards, a “digital display board advertisement partially paid by Fontana Teachers Association,” and “Decorated Pastries for Campaign Watch Night.”
Larson, on the other hand, didn’t establish an official campaign and instead submitted only two filings in recent years under his individual name, one in August 2020 and the other in August 2021.
“I anticipate that I will receive less than $2,000 and that I will spend less than $2,000 during the calendar year,” each filing stated.
Charlie McGee covers California’s High Desert for the Daily Press, focusing on the city of Barstow and its surrounding communities. He is also a Report for America corps member with The GroundTruth Project, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to supporting the next generation of journalists in the U.S. and around the world. McGee may be reached at 760-955-5341 or cmcgee@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @bycharliemcgee.
This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: Election results: Alejandre leads Larson in superintendent race
