CRESTVIEW — Whoever wins the Okaloosa County School Board race will be sworn in later this month alongside incumbent Melissa Thrush and newly elected board member Lamar White.
The race came down to 93 votes on Tuesday and was too close to call. Supervisor of Elections Paul Lux said the .09 percent difference between the votes required an automatic recount.
Throughout Tuesday night, no more than a 1,000-vote difference existed between Joe Slusser and Rodney Walker. At one point, just 33 votes separated them.
Walker was elected to the Okaloosa County School Board in 1994 and was subsequently re-elected five times. During his tenure, including this year, the Fort Walton Beach resident often served as the board chairman.
Slusser — the Okaloosa County Jail chaplain who recently retired from teaching at Shoal River Middle School in Crestview — previously served in a variety of educational roles in Kentucky.
The two men went into a runoff in Tuesday’s election after neither got a clear majority of the votes in the three-way competition during August’s primary.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: School board race too close to call