Officials expect the first recount to take about 4.5 hours, with a manual recount to follow.
With a recount underway Friday morning, Pinellas County School Board candidate Nancy Bostock now leads her opponent, Amanda Lord, by seven votes, an improvement overnight of five votes.
On Thursday, Bostock had led by just two votes. Another batch of provisional ballots and cured mail ballots were reviewed and tallied Thursday night, leading to an increase in vote count. Yesterday’s two-vote margin represented a margin of just 0.00005 percentage points. Now, the margin is 0.02 percentage points, still well within both machine and hand recount territory.
State election law calls for a machine recount if the vote is within 0.5 percentage points, and for a manual recount if it’s within 0.25 percentage points. The machine recount in the race began at 9 a.m. Friday.
Elections officials estimate the machine recount will take about 4.5 hours, with the manual recount to follow.
Bostock and Lord, or their representatives, are able to oversee the recount process.
On Tuesday night, it initially looked like Lord was dominating the race, with a nearly 1,000-vote lead. But throughout the night, the margin narrowed. By the end of Election Day, Bostock had overcome Lord and was leading by about 200 votes, still within recount territory, but a far safer lead than the two votes Bostock currently has over Lord.
The tally shifted back to the previous two-vote margin due to a batch of mail ballots that were delivered late and required signature verifications before they could be counted. That process didn’t begin until nearly midnight on Election Day, the Tampa Bay Times previously reported.
Bostock and Lord are running to replace outgoing School Board Member Stephanie Meyer, who decided not to seek re-election.
The close race may come as a surprise to some. Bostock entered the race in early January, almost two full months before Lord filed, appearing at the time to have an easy path ahead. That gave her a jump on fundraising and campaigning.
But Lord surged, ultimately outraising Bostock by about $18,000.
The razor-thin vote margin also may be an indication of voter sentiment this cycle. As a Midterm Election year when a Republican sits in the White House, Democrats are expecting to overperform. And while there’s been a huge push to install conservatives on School Boards across the state, largely through Moms for Liberty, there’s evidence voters are beginning to sour on it.
Just to the south in Sarasota County, for example, voters rejected a few GOP-backed School Board candidates, even as Republicans outnumber Democrats in the county by a more than 2-to-1 ratio.
And two years ago in the Primary, voters rejected 12 of 25 conservative School Board candidates backed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. That election, Moms for Liberty endorsed 14 candidates, with only three earning outright wins in the Primary.
A registered Republican, Bostock has an extensive list of conservative backers, including all four Republican constitutional officers permitted to make endorsements (the Supervisor of Elections cannot weigh in); all six Republican County Commissioners; Republican members of the Pinellas County legislative delegation; Peters; and a host of other current and former elected officials.
Lord attempted to claim the liberal lane, with support from Democratic Pinellas County Commissioner and former School Board Member Rene Flowers; current School Board Member Laura Hine, who is an independent but often draws support from Democrats; and former School Board Members Linda Lerner, Peggy O’Shea and Terry Krassner, all of whom were supported by Democrats.
Lerner in particular has become increasingly involved in Democratic politics since her departure from the School Board in 2018 after 28 years of service. Lord also earned support from dozens of local teachers.