SCHOOL BOARD DISTRICT 5 ELECTION RESULTS<\/a><\/p>\nNicolas builds commanding lead<\/p>\n
Nicolas held a substantial advantage across all three major voting methods reported Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
He received 2,107 Election Day votes, 1,116 early votes and 1,157 vote-by-mail ballots.<\/p>\n
Reilly received 966 Election Day votes, 384 early votes and 389 vote-by-mail ballots.<\/p>\n
The nearly three-to-one margin put Nicolas well above the threshold needed to win the two-candidate race outright.<\/p>\n
Two candidates competed for District 5<\/p>\n
The District 5 contest was a nonpartisan school board election, meaning voters participated regardless of political party affiliation.<\/p>\n
Leon County election officials listed Nicolas and James G. Reilly Jr. as the two qualified candidates for the seat.<\/p>\n
Nicolas entered Tuesday’s election as the incumbent. Ballotpedia’s 2026 Leon County Schools election overview also identifies Nicolas as the sitting District 5 board member.<\/p>\n
Three Leon school board seats up in 2026<\/p>\n
District 5 is one of three Leon County School Board seats in the 2026 election cycle.<\/p>\n
Districts 1, 3 and 5 were scheduled for election this year, although District 3 incumbent Darryl Jones won without opposition after no challenger qualified.<\/p>\n
The school board oversees policies affecting Leon County Schools, a district serving more than 31,000 students, according to Ballotpedia’s district election profile.<\/p>\n
Results remain unofficial<\/p>\n
Leon County reported overall voter turnout of 37.58% Tuesday night, with 68,700 ballots cast countywide out of 182,806 registered voters as of the 9:04 p.m. update.<\/p>\n
Because several precincts and some mail ballots remained outstanding at that update, election-night numbers could still change.<\/p>\n
However, Nicolas’ commanding lead in the District 5 contest put him more than 2,600 votes ahead of Reilly in the unofficial count.<\/p>\n
Results will become official following the canvassing and certification process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Incumbent school board member defeats challenger James Reilly with more than 70% of the vote in Tuesday’s nonpartisan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-375229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}