Only two of Tucson’s major school districts will have competitive races for their school boards after a Superior Court judge kicked Sunnyside Unified School District governing board hopeful Gabriel Morales off the ballot Wednesday.
Morales was among several local school board candidates whose nominating petitions were challenged on grounds that some of the signers weren’t registered to vote or didn’t live within the district boundaries. Many other districts didn’t field enough candidates for competitive races.
His removal means voters in Sunnyside will not have a choice who represents them on the school board for the next two years. The two remaining candidates, incumbent Eva Carillo Dong and newcomer Consuelo Hernandez, the sister of outgoing board member Daniel Hernandez, will be elected without ever having received a vote.
Morales needed 148 valid signatures from registered voters in the district. He filed 165 signatures, leaving himself a slim margin of error if any of his signatures were challenged.
Judge D. Douglas Metcalf of the Arizona Superior Court in Pima County ruled that 73 of Morales’ signatures were invalid, according to a review by the County Recorder’s Office. Most were invalidated because the person who signed wasn’t registered to vote in Pima County or the school district.
Morales asked for a continuation of his case so he could further research the signatures, but Metcalf denied the request, noting that election cases are on a truncated schedule, as ballots must be printed by the end of next week.
Morales previously accused Dong of orchestrating the challenge to his candidacy, but the challenge was actually filed by Steven Valencia, a retiree who is involved in politics. Under oath, Valencia denied that anybody put him up to it.
Valencia said he’s active in the labor union and had talked to “a lot of people” about Morales’ candidacy since he hadn’t heard of Morales before. “It was a curiosity to me why you would run,” Valencia said.
Morales said he wished Valencia would have approached him “man to man,” but he plans to run for the office again in two years and will get more signatures next time to avoid a challenge.
Morales said he has three children in the district and wanted to run for the office to ensure they receive a quality education and have safety and security at school.
“Now I know for next time I’ll have to get 50 percent more (than the minimum signatures) or more,” he said.
With Morales’ ouster, Sunnyside joins the Amphitheater, Catalina Foothills, Flowing Wells, Sahuarita, Tanque Verde and Vail school districts as not having enough candidates to merit holding an election. The school board elections in those seven districts will be canceled outright, according to Pima County Superintendent of Schools Dustin Williams.
Of the nine major districts in Pima County, only Tucson Unified and Marana will have competitive school board races.
