One incumbent survives, one is ousted in election for Monterey Peninsula College board.

Two incumbent trustees from the sometimes volatile board for the Monterey Peninsula Community College District faced challengers in the Nov. 5 election. One, Chair Libby Downey, survived in her contest for Area 3. The other, Debbie Anthony, lost in Area 4.

Downey faced two challengers, Chelsea Lenowska and Parvaneh Keivanfar. In the most recent vote count from Monterey County Elections, Downey was securely in first place with 49.4 percent of the vote. Lenowska was second with 42 percent. Keivanfar had 8.5 percent.

Anthony lost her reelection bid to former Chabot College president Celia Barberena, earning 3,614 votes, or 47 percent, compared to Barberena's 4,037, 52.7 percent.

The board will gain a second new member in Area 5 with Anita Crawley, who had no challengers. She will replace long time board member Loren Steck who did not run for reelection. Crawley has a long history locally of anti-racism activism. 

With Anthony and Steck replaced with new members, it could mean a return of some stability to the board which over the past few years has seen some contentious relationships between board members, especially in the past year.

Throughout Anthony's term she has had a habit of disrupting meeting discussions with objections and other interruptions. Steck and Downey regularly were at odds with trustees Roslyn Green and Yuri Anderson.

The board's dysfunction was on display earlier this year when it took months to elect a new board president, during which time trustees filed complaints against each other and couldn't reach an agreement on a process to handle those complaints. (Names of who filed complaints and who the complaints were about were not released to the public.)