A blue wave hovers over the heated Lucia Mar Unified School District elections, according to initial votes counts in San Luis Obispo County races.
Board candidates Colleen Martin, Donna Kandel, David Warren, and Anna Cordero—all endorsed by the local chapter of the Democratic Party—held leads in their respective trustee areas.
Of the 6,800 registered voters in Trustee Area 3, which mainly covers Oceano, 2,415 eligible ballots were counted as of Nov. 4. Cordero led that race with a little more than 50 percent of the vote share.
Her opponents Sarah Moreland and Andrea Naemi-Vergne fell behind with 32 percent and 17 percent of the votes, respectively.
“I’m grateful for the early results and for the support of voters in Lucia Mar Trustee Area 3, but every ballot deserves to be counted, and I’ll wait for the final tally,” Cordero said. “My focus will always be on students and learning. That means intentional work on literacy and reading programs for struggling students, supporting community schools and increasing services for students, and practicing fiscal responsibility while working to reduce class sizes.”
Since the pandemic, Lucia Mar’s school board meetings have been fraught with tension trickling down from national politics. Over the past two years, the debates hardened into parent group demands to ban books focused on race and sexual identity, and to change district policy around transgender students on campus.
Cordero’s possible win would mean an upset for incumbent Naemi-Vergne, making the Oceano mother and history teacher a fresh face on the seven-person school board.
SLO Superior Court small claims judge Warren, the frontrunner for Trustee Area 6 that covers parts of Nipomo, could also win the seat from incumbent Eilene Pham.
Both Warren and Cordero were unable to fully participate in the League of Women Voters of SLO County candidate forum because Pham and Naemi-Vergne declined to attend. The two incumbents previously voted in favor of pulling books from the Arroyo Grande High School library.
“I am obviously pleased with the initial results and grateful for all the support I received from the team around me,” Warren said. “If I prevail, I am looking forward to collaborating with my colleagues on the board to achieve agreements in the best interests of all of the district’s children.”
Out of over 3,800 eligible ballots counted as of Nov. 4 in Trustee Area 6, almost 60 percent were marked in support of Warren while Pham secured a little over 40 percent of the vote.
In neighboring Trustee Area 5, covering parts of Arroyo Grande, incumbent Martin won almost 44 percent of 3,224 counted votes. Opponents Julie Tizzano and Melissa Johnson-Barash received 31 percent and 25 percent of votes, respectively.
It was a close race for incumbent Kandel of Nipomo’s Trustee Area 7. She won 54 percent of the nearly 2,000 votes counted as of Nov. 4. Her opponent, Traci Bognuda, secured 46 percent of the preliminary votes, with a difference of 135 votes between them.
Paul Bischoff of Coastal California Construction Company, who handled Moreland, Pham, Tizzano, and Bognuda’s campaigns, didn’t respond to New Times by press time. ∆
This article appears in Nov 5-12, 2026.
