Article was updated to better reflect where Nutall lives.
Justin Henry and Bernadette Nutall will match up in a runoff election for the Dallas ISD District 9 trustee seat on June 16 after Henry missed winning the election outright by 69 votes.
No candidate earned the requisite 50 percent to avoid a runoff. Henry, a Hollywood Santa Monica resident, earned 47 percent of the 2,313 votes, and southern Dallas resident Nutall tallied 32 percent. Powerful education political action committees Dallas Kids First and Educate Dallas endorsed both Henry and third place finisher Ed Turner, whose 463 votes would have won the election for Henry.
Henry decided to run for the position a day after the Dallas ISD board voted against a 13-cent tax hike earlier this school year that would have provided additional funding for the district. Nutall, who has been on the board since 2009, is part of the group of trustees who voted against that tax hike, though she did support smaller funding increases. Henry is in support of the tax increase, and victory for him would give the pro tax hike faction the six votes they need to pass such a measure.
District 9 includes parts of East Dallas, South Dallas, Deep Ellum, Pleasant Grove, Downtown and Uptown. This year’s voter turnout decreased by over 40 percent from the last time District 9 was up for reelection in 2015, when only 7 percent of voters weighed in and 3,922 people voted in the school board race.
Read the Advocate’s cheat sheet for the contest and our dive into the divisions and alliances that exist on the Dallas ISD board to learn more about the politics of public education in Dallas.
