Monday, March 1, 2010

District 7 OKC School Board candidate withdraws

Oklahoma City School Board candidate Larry Collins announced Sunday in a news release that he is pulling out of the race for the District 7 seat.

Collins did not return phone calls Sunday, but political consultant Don Hoover said the candidate is ending his campaign and endorsing his opponent, Ron Millican.

The two men earned a spot in an April 6 run-off by defeating the incumbent in the Feb. 9 school board election.

In the news release, Collins, 44, is quoted as saying he has met with Millican, 72, since the Feb. 9 election and is "convinced that he will do a great job on the school board for Southeast Oklahoma City.”

Collins, who vowed to focus his efforts on vocational education, received 31.8 percent of the vote in the election. Millican, a retired assistant superintendent from the Midwest City-Del City School District, received 48.6 percent of the vote. Incumbent Wilfredo Santos-Rivera came in third with 19.6 percent of the vote. Millican was nine votes shy of winning outright.
Collins was on the Feb. 9 ballot even though he didn’t meet all the requirements for candidacy.

He registered to vote less than a month before filing for office. State law requires that candidates be registered to vote for at least six months. No one challenged his eligibility.
According to the news release, it is too late for Collins to have his name removed from the April 6 ballot.

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