In a contentious battle between two Morgan Hill residents, Santa Clara County Board of Education incumbent Claudia Rossi held a more than 9,000-vote lead over first-time challenger Gino Borgioli for the Trustee Area 7 seat as of Nov.13, according to  unofficial results from the county’s Registrar of Voters.
Rossi, a registered nurse and mother of two, won nearly 57 percent of the votes, 37,530, ahead of retired business consultant Borgioli, at 43 percent and 28,405 votes, and is on her way to a second four-year term on the county board.
Rossi previously served on the MHUSD board from 2010 to 2014. Borgioli is finishing out his final days of a four-year term on the same local board, where he was elected in 2014.
Rossi took aim at Borgioli at an Oct. 8 candidate’s forum held at Ann Sobrato High School, accusing him of having knowledge of an 2015 email scandal involving another MHUSD trustee, David Gerard, and also taking part in a recall movement against former MHUSD
board president Bob Benevento.
She also shared that Borgioli voted against helping former board colleague, Amy Porter, in her legal battle to get a restraining order against one-time recall leader Robert Guynn. That case was later dismissed, and Guynn was never charged in relation to Jensen’s harassment claim.
At that forum, Borgioli denied both claims made by Rossi. However, he did admit to being cc’d on the insulting emails sent by Gerard to Guynn.
In the Nov. 9 print edition of the Gilroy Dispatch, the early unofficial results were reversed for the county school board seat. Rossi had held the lead beginning with the earliest returns.
