No Decision Yet For Maurer

Chris Lehman, OPB:

Ron Maurer says he needs some more time to decide his next move in the race for Oregon Superintendent of Public Instruction. Maurer is currently a Republican state Representative. He was trying to unseat Susan Castillo, a former Democratic lawmaker seeking a third term in the state's top education job. Maurer and Castillo were the only two candidates on the May ballot for the non-partisan position. Typically, that means the one who got the most votes would win the seat outright and would not need to run again in November.

But in a strange twist, more than 2200 people submitted write-in votes. While that normally wouldn't have made a difference, in this case it almost did. That's because to avoid a run-off, the leading vote-getter must get more than 50% of the overall vote. Right now, Castillo is standing at 50.2% with all of the votes counted (but not "official" yet). So Maurer has to decide whether to request a costly recount or be content to let the result stand. When I spoke with him this afternoon, he told me he's mulling whether to request a recount in Lane County, where he says there are some "issues" that may have prevented an accurate count. The Lane County clerk isn't ordering a recount, but Maurer says he's still thinking about paying for one himself. He says that would cost somewhere between $13,000 and $16,000. But his campaign is essentially out of money--it currently shows a cash balance of just $48--so it's not immediately clear how Maurer would pay for a Lane County recount, much less a statewide one, which would cost upwards of $100,000.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width="1" height="1" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3320471128493510714-8826115854879697636?l=www.capitolcurrents.com" alt=""/></div>

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