Pippin wins Monroe County Board of Education seat

A 40-year-old banker will represent District 6 on the Monroe County Board of Education, voters decided Tuesday.

Stuart Pippin, 40, will replace Tammy Fletcher, who has served on the board for 16 years but plans to move out of the district.

Pippin drew 335 votes in the runoff election, defeating 23-year-old Wesley Cone, who received 280 votes.

“It’s exciting. We ran a hard campaign,” Pippin said by phone from the Monroe County Courthouse Tuesday night. “We did a lot of door-to-door. We just ran with a lot of heart and a lot of determination.

“I guess one of my campaign things was just leading the next generation of teachers and students, so I want to make sure that we’re training our teachers well and training our students to be leaders.”

Pippin is the father of a first-grader and a 2-year-old. His wife is a teacher at Rutland Middle School in Macon, his mother was a teacher and his brother is a coach.

Cone, a managing associate with the Piedmont Group who is married to a Monroe County schoolteacher, said he’ll be getting back “to what I love to do, which is staying involved and meeting new folks every day.”

“It’s been pretty overwhelming,” Cone said of his first-ever political campaign. “I was kind of reluctant to run at first because I’m 23 years old and I’m not from Monroe County. I think if you look at what we did, we did a great job. ... I’m disappointed in the outcome, but I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished.”

This story was originally published July 26, 2016 at 8:54 PM with the headline "Pippin wins Monroe County Board of Education seat."