Community Impact: Runoff election set for ACC board of trustees seat; two incumbents win re-election

Stephanie Gharakanian, special counsel for the Workers Defense Project, and Sarah Mills, director of Public Policy and Government Relations at the Texas Association for Home Care and Hospice, will face off in a runoff election for a place on the Austin Community College board of trustees.

Gharakanian received 140,502 total votes in the Place 8 race Nov. 6, while Mills had 111,578 and a third candidate, Douglas Gibbins, received 60,766. Gharakanian received 44.9 percent of the vote while Mills had 35.7 percent. Since no candidate achieved 50 percent of the vote, the top two will advance to the runoff.

All of the ACC board of trustees seats are at large positions elected by voters across the college’s six-county district. Final voting tallies remain unofficial.

Board of trustees Chair Barbara P. Mink has served on the board since 2000 and was re-elected to a fourth term Tuesday night, gaining 225,192 votes to defeat Mitch Fuller, a former Cedar Park City Council member, who received 94,604 votes.

Julie Ann Nitsch, a political activist and former ACC student and employee, retained her Place 9 seat, earning 180,163 votes, or 58.9 percent, to defeat small-business owner Lora H. Weber, who served for nine years as the director of External Relations for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.Nitsch has served on the board since 2016, when she was elected by voters in the district to serve the remaining two years of trustee Allen Kaplan’s term following Kaplan’s resignation.