Yoho, Gallagher, Allen and Dean Rose elected to school board; Cindy Rose refuses to accept results

Nov. 23—After a high-profile campaign season that featured two diametrically opposed groups of candidates, the results are official: The Frederick County Board of Education is getting three candidates from one group and one candidate from the other.

Karen Yoho, Rae Gallagher, Dean Rose and Nancy Allen will be sworn in Dec. 7.

Yoho, Gallagher and Rose — who finished in first, second and third, respectively — ran on the Students First slate, endorsed by the unions representing Frederick County Public Schools employees.

Allen, who finished fourth, ran on the Education Not Indoctrination slate, a conservative group focused on reforming the ways the district handles race, gender and more.

Ysela Bravo of the Students First slate finished in fifth. Cindy Rose and Olivia Angolia of the ENI slate finished sixth and seventh, respectively.

Yoho, the only incumbent in the race, said in an interview Saturday she had emailed Allen to congratulate her. While she wished Bravo had secured a seat, Yoho said she was happy, overall, with the election results and was prepared to work with Allen.

"I've never wanted to be in lockstep. I ran with Jay Mason and Brad Young, and consider them both friends, and yet you can look at how often we did not vote the same," Yoho said. "I think it's healthy for the county, the school system, to have differing perspectives."

The ENI slate originally had four members, but candidate Mark Joannides did not make it through the primary. In the run-up to the July election, the slate members stressed that their goal was to capture a majority on the seven-member board.

Allen said it felt "bittersweet" to be the only ENI candidate elected. She said she looked forward to working with the other officials.

"I think that the campaign dynamics are different than when you actually sit down and get to work," she said. "I anticipate that the team effort of the board will be maybe a challenge at times, but it certainly won't be work that isn't worth doing."

Cindy Rose, the unofficial leader of the ENI slate through both the primary and general elections, said she did not accept the election results.

"I don't believe the voters of Frederick receive[d] a fair election," she wrote in an emailed statement. "I do not believe the people of Frederick elected those who support teaching our children America is systemically racist, whites are privileged or that valuable instruction time should be spent on race and gender while our test scores plummet. The people of Frederick deserve an honest election."

On Election Night, Cindy Rose was in second place. Her standing dropped as mail-in and provisional ballots were counted over the ensuing days.

In another email, Rose wrote that "only Democrats seem to benefit from long drawn out vote counts" and that "voting stopped magically after" Democrat Jessica Fitzwater surpassed Republican Michael Hough in the race for Frederick County executive. She wrote that she would not concede and the election results should not be certified.

Mail-in ballots in Frederick County and elsewhere tend to skew Democratic, and because they're accepted as long as they're postmarked by Election Day, it takes longer to count them.

Allen, too, said she disapproved of mail-in ballots. She said she understood Cindy Rose's view, and would be "100% behind" her if she decided to pursue a recount or publicly challenge the results.

Angolia, meanwhile, who finished with about 2,800 fewer votes than Rose, wrote in an emailed statement that she congratulated the elected members and hoped "they will keep their campaign promises of ensuring that every child gets the best possible education."

As a political newcomer, Angolia wrote, she "had to learn a lot, quickly" over the past 15 months, which she called "a very eye-opening experience."

"While my race was not successful insofar as winning a seat, I believe it was successful in bringing sorely needed attention to a very important area — the improvements needed in the public school system that will benefit the children, parents and taxpayers of this community rather than the Unions," she wrote.

Dean Rose and Gallagher each said they were taking time off between the election and the beginning of their tenures.

"We have a lot of work to do," Gallagher said.

Dean Rose said his group's focus on door-knocking and direct engagement with voters had paid off.

The school board race had by far the most undervotes on the Frederick County ballot, according to data from the Frederick County Board of Elections.

Undervotes occur when a voter either does not vote in a particular race or chooses fewer than the maximum number of candidates allowed.

The school board race had about 131,400 undervotes — more than three times as many as there were in the race for Judge of the Orphans' Court, which had the second-highest amount at roughly 42,000.

Since four seats were on the ballot, any voter who chose to support only Allen, Angolia and Rose would have generated an undervote.

Follow Jillian Atelsek on Twitter: @jillian_atelsek