More to come later, but the Wake County school board picked Tom Benton to be its newest member and hired a lobbyist to oppose the legislative changes backed by the county commissioners.

Benton got four votes from Susan Evans, Kevin Hill, Christine Kushner and Jim Martin. Keith Sutton voted for Don Mial. Deborah Prickett backed Wendy Ford and John Tedesco chose Shinica Thomas.

The board voted 5-2 with Democrats in support and Republicans in opposition to authorize interim Superintendent Stephen Gainey to enter into contracts to get people to lobby the General Assembly not to adopt the legislative goals backed by commissioners.

Commissioners want to change state law to take over from the school board the jobs of locating, constructing and owning schools. They also want authority to give money to help charter schools build facilities and to require that four of the nine school board seats be elected at large.

Here's a recap of the interviews of Tom Benton and Don Mial for the District 1 vacancy on the Wake County school board.

Benton was the most direct and explicit of all the applicants so far on his views on diversity, student assignment and magnet schools. His familiarity with those issues from having spent most of his 32 years in education in Wake showed.

Benton said he supported using student assignment to promote diverse schools and also supports the magnet school program. But at the same time he said they need to balance the concerns from parents about reassignment, including low-income students who are being moved.

Shinica Thomas cites her many years of being involved in her children's schools and her passion for helping students learn with why she should be appointed to the District 1 seat on the Wake County school board.

In Thomas' application, she writes that she understands firsthand the need for family involvement having served for the past 10 years in school PTAs and booster groups for her two teenage sons. She's now the parent representative for Heritage High School on the District 1 Board Advisory Council.

"To say that I have a vested interest in this school system is putting it mildly," Thomas, 39, a Democrat from Wake Forest, writes. "It is important to me that community members are engaged in strong relationships and meaningful opportunities in our school system to help foster its success."

Don Mial's application for the District 1 vacancy on the Wake County school board should look familiar, especially if you live in state House District 39.

A lot of Mial's application letter matches what's on his campaign website from his unsuccessful run last year in the Democratic primary for House 39. His school board application includes a few wording changes, but whole sentences are the same as the website, including references about expanding pre-kindergarten programs and addressing the achievement gap.

What's new in the application is Mial, 62, talking about what it was like being a minority student in Raleigh as the school system slowly began to integrate.

The eight applicants for the Wake County school board vacancy are giving their views on diversity, armed guards in schools, the choice plan, performance pay for teachers, the school construction bond issue and charter schools.

The answers are part of an article in this week's issue of the liberal Independent Weekly, which focused on their views on diversity and armed guards. The diversity responses run the gamut from support to opposition to its use in student assignment.

On one end are these people whose views on diversity seem to be the closest in line to the board majority.

My eventual goal is to do separate blog posts for the six applicants who filed Friday for the Wake County school board District 1 vacancy, similar to what I did when the first two applied.

But for now, I'm including links so people can view the applications that all eight applicants submitted. Some tout their K-12 education experience, or their business experience or their military experience.

The applicants also bring up an interesting list of references, including current state legislators, past and present mayors, past school board members and leaders of community groups.

Pencil in Feb. 5 for the date when the Wake County school board will fill the vacancy for the District 1 seat.

The school board will hold 30-minute interviews with all eight applicants that day. The vote will come toward the end of that day's regularly scheduled meeting.

It was a bit of a compromise.

We've got the names, but not yet the application packets, for the people who filed Friday for the open District 1 seat on the Wake County school board.

The applicants are:

* H. Wade Minter, a Democrat from North Raleigh, who unsuccessfully ran in 2002 and 2004 as a Libertarian candidates for state House.

GOP Wake County Commissioner Joe Bryan has usually come off as a moderate over the years but is pushing himself as a conservative defender of taxpayers in his latest round of campaign advertising.

In this campaign mailer, Bryan calls himself "our first line of defense against higher taxes. Bryan, who is running against Democratic Don Mial, says he's "on the front lines, fighting against the reckless big-spending liberals."

"Joe Bryan knows that ever dollar saved in government spending is a dollar that you're not paying in taxes," Bryan says in the mailer. "That's why he led efforts to balance the county budget without raising taxes. Instead, he cut $30 million in spending while safeguarding needed funds for Wake County schools. And he voted to cut his own salary by 10% to make it happen."

All of the final pre-election campaign finance reports are in now and they show that the four Republican candidates for Wake County commissioner have raised more than their Democratic opponents.

Republicans got $48,000 from Art Pope and his family and $31,000 from political action committees for realtors and homebuilders. They also got thousands of dollars from individuals involved in both fields.

Democrats got $13,000 from Jim Goodmon and his wife. Democrats didn't get anywhere close to the Republicans in terms of PAC money. But they did a lot  of individual smaller donations from people who've opposed the school board's elimination of the diversity policy.