Goldstein, Fischer, O'Donoghue Elected to New Trier Board

After a close race, Lori Goldstein, Peter Fischer and Patrick O'Donoghue were elected to the New Trier High School Board of Education, resulting in a combination of the New Trier Caucus slate and the independent ORG candidates on the board.

Courtney Greve, a spokeswoman for the Cook County Clerk's Office, said all early voting numbers and absentee ballots received on time are included in that total.

"Now we're just waiting on provisional ballots and late arrival absentees," Greve said.

Greve said she expects the results to be finalized within a few hours.

Goldstein won the plurality of the vote with 18 percent of the voters, followed closely behind by O’Donoghue with 17 percent and Fischer with a little over 16 percent. Goldstein and Fischer were Caucus candidates while O'Donoghue was an independent candidate. The candidates who did not win election were close behind: Greg Robitaille had 16 percent, and Joel Goldhar and Timothy Scherman had 15 percent each.

“We knew this would be a tight race,” said Patrick O’Donoghue, the only ORG candidate to be elected.  “I think it’s going to be very difficult to be the only one from my slate that was elected, but we’ll work through this together.”

The Northfield resident will be the youngest member of the board.

"I'm hoping the results don't change too much," said Goldstein, referring to late ballots that could still be included in the total.

Fischer echoed her.

"I hate to say this but I think the election is still too close to call," he said in an email to Winnetka-Glencoe Patch.

In a race focused on the district’s finances and last year’s failed $174 million referendum, ORG candidate Greg Robitaille, who trailed Fischer by only 245 votes, said he was pleased to have had an influence on the issues. 

“I’m happy I ran because I think I had an impact on changing the platform that the caucus candidates ran on,” he said, while following the returns at Little Ricky’s.  “We helped to change the dialogue in this election and we elevated the issues of fiscal responsibility to a level I don’t think would have existed had we not run.”

Robitaille, along with O’Donoghue and Joel Goldhar, ran in opposition to the New Trier Caucus-endorsed candidates on the platform of bringing fiscal responsibility to the New Trier community. Wes Baumann, New Trier's formal principal who was involved with the ORG PAC, in the school's history. Throughout their campaign, the ORG candidates stressed the importance of dealing with the increasing budget now in order to avoid a larger financial emergency down the road.

“We wanted a group of people on the board that understood that in a time of limited resources, how you allocate money is really important,” said Vanessa Rachmaninoff, chairman of the Fiscal Responsibility for New Trier political action committee. 

Check back soon for more election updates.