Incumbent Defeated In Bentonville School Board Runoff Election

Challenger Grant Lightle handily defeated incumbent Kim Mertes in Tuesday’s Bentonville School Board runoff election.

Lightle captured 344 votes (61 percent) to Mertes’ 218 (39 percent), the Benton County Election Commission revealed.

Mertes and Lightle defeated three other candidates for Bentonville’s Zone 3 seat in the Sept. 18 school board election. Lightle captured 48 percent of the vote to Mertes’ 37 percent. The race went to a runoff election since no candidate captured more than 50 percent of the vote at the time.

There were no other runoff elections in Benton County. Two other contested Bentonville races saw winners elected in September without a runoff. Four other Bentonville seats had only one candidate.