Edel Alonso, after a night of celebrating and monitoring the election results throughout the night, found herself still awake when the sun came up “refreshing and refreshing” the election results website.
“I kept refreshing and refreshing the LAVote website,” she said, noting it was a tight race competing against longtime College of the Canyons trustee Bruce Fortine.
“I was behind Bruce at the beginning of the night but once I edged ahead, the margin kept getting a little wider each time,” she said.
It was Wednesday morning when she learned she had emerged the winner in the Santa Clarita Community College District Board race.
Alonso came away with 4,756 votes representing a share of 42.31 percent of all votes cast.
Incumbent Fortine ended up with 4,308 votes, or 38.32 percent of cast votes. Ronda Baldwin-Kennedy had 2,178 votes (19.37 percent).
Alonso said she plans on attending the COC board meeting tonight.
“I’m excited about having won and I’m excited about getting sworn in,” she said. “At the board meeting tonight I want to thank Mr. Fortine for all of his years of service.”
Fortine told The Signal Wednesday morning he was proud of his campaign in this election.
“I am proud of my campaign. I ran a clean, honest campaign,” he said. “I just came up short.”
“I’ve received a lot of emails and text messages this morning,” he said. “Apparently, a lot of those people look at me as Mr. COC.”
Fortine said he plans to stay involved with the college.
“There’s an opportunity to get on the college foundation where I could raise money for student scholarships.”
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