It wasn’t the most highly watched election, but the Austin Community College board of trustees run-off briefly held some drama for at least one person: the winner, Vic Villarreal.
“For about an hour, hour and a half, I had only a 90-vote lead and wasn’t certain it would hold up,” said Villarreal, an adjunct professor of management at ACC and former Leander City Council member.
That hour or so would have been the time between the release of early voting results and the point when the election day boxes started coming in. At the 7pm close of polls, the race was much closer than it later turned out to be – early voting results showed Villarreal with 2,403 to Luminex Corp. Vice President David Reiter‘s 2,313 – a mere 51% lead. “We both had excellent early vote strategy,” Villarreal said. But Villarreal surged hard on Saturday, cleaning up 59% of the day’s votes for a final total of 55%. Turnout was a pathetic 1.7% of registered voters.
Villarreal and Reiter got into the run-off after emerging from the first-round vote in May, taking 39% and 25% respectively in a four-candidate field.
Villarreal will be resigning his professorship soon as per legal requirements for board service. “There are some immediate priorities, and then there’s some other kind of intermediate priorities,” he said the next day, looking ahead to his board service. “Right now, the immediate priority is passing the fiscal year 2011 budget and then also beginning the process of selecting the new ACC president.”
Five days before the run-off, ACC President Stephen Kinslow announced that he would retire when his contract expires in June 2011, after six years at the helm and 34 years of service to ACC. “Between now and the end of the year, and it might even go into January, I think we’re going to be working very diligently not only to craft our process, but also thinking through the process and vetting candidates and selecting finalists,” Villarreal said.
June 12 Run-off Election Results
| ACC Board | Early Voting | Election Day | Total Votes |
| Vic Villarreal | 2,403 (51.0%) | 2,760 (58.8%) | 5,163 (54.8%) |
| David S. Reiter | 2,313 (49.0%) | 1,937 (41.2%) | 4,250 (45.2%) |
| AISD Board | |||
| Tamala Barksdale | 2,222 (49.5%) | 2,906 (59.2%) | 5,128 (54.5%) |
| Julie Cowan | 2,271 (50.5%) | 2,004 (40.8%) | 4,275 (45.5%) |
This article appears in June 18 • 2010.