Nine Out of 10 Candidates Take Plum School Board Slots

The votes are unofficially in and while one Plum Borough school board candidate said he’s going to “catch his breath,” another won’t hold her breath since the results aren’t official.

Based the upon unofficial results available on the Allegheny County website, with 21 out of 21 precincts reporting, Richard Zucco, Bill Ferguson, John St. Leger, Joe Tommarello, and Jim Rogers took the Republican slots.

Zucco received the most Republican votes, with 15.52 percent. Ferguson was a close second with 14.45 percent. St. Leger, Tommarello, and Rogers rounded out the last three slots with 13.98 percent, 13.86 percent and 13.28 percent, respectively.

“We at least broke even,” Ferguson said when contacted after the polls closed. “I don’t think anybody was terribly surprised with what they saw.”

Asked what he would do now that the primaries are over, Ferguson, said he would take a week off “to catch my breath.” After that, he said he would continue to study the school system and “watch what’s going on”.

The 87-year-old resident of the Longwood at Oakmont retirement village is, like all those on the Republican ticket, vying for a position on the school board for the first time.

 Loretta White, Tom McGough, Richard Zucco, Dr. Marcia Chicka, and Ruth Pastore will be on the Democrat’s ballot in November, according to Tuesday night’s numbers.

White, who is currently on the school board, received the most votes from the Democrats with 14.99 percent. Fellow incumbent McGough followed close behind with 13.81 percent. Zucco, who had been the Republican’s top vote getter, received the third highest amount of Democrat votes with 13.81 percent. Chicka received 11.37 percent and Pastore, 11.18 percent.

Richard Filar was also on the ballot but did not make the top five for either party.

Write-in votes totaled .2 per cent for the Republicans and .3 for the Democrats.

Contacted by telephone last night for her reaction to the election results, White, who has served on the Plum's school board for six years, wanted to reserve her comment until the results were official.

She cited an instance about six years ago when the results had seemed sure at the end of the night, but in the end, had changed.

“We already had an election where a young man went to bed thinking he’d made it on the ticket. When he woke up, he found out he hadn’t,” she said.