James Hurst was caught off guard Tuesday night at the news he had won his race for Hermiston School Board.
Hurst hadn’t heard the results when contacted by Northeast Oregon Now for comment on his victory over Nazario Rivera for Position 7.
“I’m certainly honored and surprised,” he said Tuesday night. Hurst won with 1,054 votes to defeat Nazario Rivera, who received 687. Hurst will succeed Ginny Holthus who did not seek re-election.
The race was the only contested race among four school board races and received unexpected attention in the final week when an anonymous Facebook user began attacking Rivera for three-year-old tweets that were critical of Hermiston residents. Among the tweets that were highlighted on the Voterhermiston Facebook page was from June 2020 that read in part, “So many trash people reside in Hermiston.”
Rivera apologized for the tweet last week.
“My June 3, 2020, tweet was wrong and inappropriate, and for that, I am truly sorry,” he wrote to Northeast Oregon Now. “That experience taught me that social media is not the way to heal a community – action is.”
Hurst said a few people brought up the tweets in recent days, but he said he told them he would rather discuss other issues he felt were more important.
“Whenever it came up, I would try really hard to direct the conversation in another direction,” he said.
Rivera declined to comment Tuesday night about the results of the race.
Hurst said he didn’t think the controversy had an impact on the race.
“I think most people had voted before the story came out,” he said.
Hurst said he had never run for any type of election prior to this year’s school board race but did so because education has always been an important issue for him. He has three kids in school, including an exchange student, and two children who have graduated.
He said the challenge in his race was getting people to vote.
“I worked hard to get people out to vote in an election cycle that is often ignored,” Hurst said. “I honestly didn’t have any expectations.”
