Was McClain's BOE candidacy a ruse?

Word I’m hearing now from several sources is that Jim McClain, who picked up a nominating petition on Dec. 27 to run for the 9^th District School Board seat, did it for show, rather than to actually run.

Funny.

Anyhoo, Georgiana Vines over at the Slantinel wrote a column about his possibility as a candidate – right smack here for the pay wall that mostly features information that you can read elsewhere for free – and, well, quite frankly, at the time I wondered what his intentions were.

As Vines noted, he didn’t really distinguish himself from Pam Trainor, the incumbent whose campaign he actually managed four years ago. In her column, McClain suggested that he “sees the reasoning for Common Core standards” and didn’t “blame McIntyre for the mixed feelings in the community.”

So what were his motivations? Well, maybe he will run. Or maybe he just wanted to get the juices flowing, maybe get some other folks invigorated enough to run.

Whatever the case, two others since then – retired teacher Larry Clark (as noted by the rogue blogger Brian Hornback right smack here) and librarian Amber Rountree – have also since picked up nominating petitions.

Those two, I suspect, will distinguish themselves from Trainor who (from the way I’m hearing it) pretty much ignored the overall will of South Knoxville residents when she approved the superintendent’s gazillion dollar school budget a few years ago and then most recently agreed to give the superintendent another year on his contract.

The biggest beneficiary if McClain does pull out, however, will more than likely be Clark if he does decide to run. I suspect that the two of them would have split each other’s votes, allowing Rountree and Trainor to slide into the August general election. (This is assuming it would have been a four-person race.)

Now, it’s going to be a little harder to predict.

Well, not really.

But that’s for another time.

For the latest on who has picked up petitions, click right smack here.