Tawanda S. Shannon and Santrail Hunt-Kuykendall will square off Nov. 29 in a general election runoff that will decide the winner of the Education District 7 school board race.
Shannon, 48, and Kuykendall, 36, were the top two vote-getters in a tightly contested field of three candidates competing Tuesday for a position on the East Tallahatchie School District Board of Trustees.
Only 32 votes out of a total of 704 cast separated the leader from the third-place finisher. Each of the three hopefuls, all of them Charleston residents, received more than 30% of the tally.
Shannon led the pack with 246 votes (34.94%), Kuykendall received 233 votes (33.10%) and James Lewis "Honey" Johnson, 69, totaled 214 votes (30.40%). Write-ins accounted for the remaining 11 votes (1.56%).
Shannon led the field in votes at the Charleston 1, 2 and 3 precincts, while Johnson carried Murphreesboro and Spring Hill.
Only voters in those precincts who live in ED7 will be eligible to participate in the runoff, when polls at those five precincts will again be open from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.
The incumbent school board member, Tameka McIntyre, 38, did not seek a second term.
The winner of the Nov. 29 runoff will begin a new five-year term in January.
In Education District 2, incumbent West Tallahatchie School District Board of Trustees member Marvin F. George, 56, did not draw any opposition to his reelection bid. George is completing his first full term.
Members of the East and West Tallahatchie school districts’ five-member boards of trustees serve staggered five-year terms, with one seat in each district coming up for election every fall.
In the only other challenged race on local ballots Tuesday, Tallahatchie County voters favored Democratic incumbent 2nd District U.S. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson over his Republican challenger, Brian Flowers. Thompson received 1,771 local votes (56.82%) while Flowers got 1,339 (42.96%). Districtwide Tuesday night, with about 44% of precincts reporting, Thompson was leading with 52% of the vote.
