To tell you I am astonished is putting it lightly. Having three candidates I endorsed all win is pretty surprising. I was hoping to get at least 2 of them elected. This is the first time in my blog history all of my candidates won.
Cameraman Bruce and I worked on a strategy that was based on targeting historical voters while betting on a low voter turnout. The planets aligned. And while I can pat myself on the back a little bit, I will admit there were several other factors that made these THREEÂ victorious.
• We had fantastic, experienced, smart, engaged candidates that worked their asses off. Neitzert alone was on full nitro since he announced. It really came down to their amazing campaigning.
• No incumbents in the race.
• The two big winners got Argus endorsements
• Poor strategies by their opponents, which we jokingly called “throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall”
• We kept a vigilant eye on the city clerk, the county auditor and the SOS office for any mishaps (which there were a few – we will be talking about them in the near future).
I congratulate the candidates that won, and I wish the losers the best of luck in the future. Candidates like Srstka, Fenner, Noble, Dobberpuhl and Warren have tons of potential and should run in the future.
I guess you could say we didn’t listen to the NAYSAYERS.
A breath of fresh air on the City Council. Yippie!
Not a good way for the current City Clerk to leave office. After all the work of the Minnehaha County Election Review Committee in 2015, it looked like we could have had a smoother election but nope, nada, ain’t gonna happen. Again…
The recommendations madeby the committee the city clerk was part of and used in the 2015 School Election worked. Bob Litz and his crew did a great job last year following the recommendations making the district’s Bev Chase look good.
My usual watching of the process was combined with volunteering to help with the election was rejected by the clerks. I understand but why return to pre-review committee processes?
I showed up before 7:00pm and was disappointed by the cluster mess the City Clerks decided to follow. It was designed to be a mess and the failure it turned out to be. The counts should have been done by 8:30 to 9:00pm at the latest but because of the return to the broken methods of the past, failure.
All i can say this was a failure on the part of the Clerk’s office. It was disappointing to see history, experience and good plans completely pushed out of the way as if we never had an election before.
Everything we learned from 2014 was thrown out by the Clerk. Was it to make Bob Litz and his hard working staff look bad? Who knows.
We’ll be talking about crappy programming and other SD SOS Office issues in the near future which lead to some of the errors of the night but we should all say thanks to the efforts of the Auditor’s staff for working through the cluster f***** mess brought from 10th & Dakota to the county tabulators.
Hands backward in front of face.
WE DID IT SIOUX FALLS
Congrats to you and especially to Theresa, Greg & Pat.
City Council meetings are about to become exponentially more interesting.
Can you spell L-A-M-E D-U-C-K M-A-Y-O-R?
Someone emailed this to me last night, LOL;
All the kings horses, and all the kings men . . . . Couldn’t even help Howdie Doodie (Paulson) win the
“elect-shen” !
It will be fun to see just exactly how the city goes now that you’ve got all YOUR people in place 🙂 Even more interesting to see this place turn into a cheerleading squad’s work-out room. What are yo8u gonna do with all that venom?
“What are yo8u gonna do with all that venom?”
Erpenbach, Huether, Kiley and Rolfing are still going to be around the next two years. And they will probably bring Selberg onto team rubber stamp.
Paulson’s campaign experience – and before him De Knudson’s failed City Council bid – are encouraging signs that the elite can’t buy every election race here. Hallelujah!
Selberg (Craig Lloyd’s new point man on the Council) will quickly align himself with Mike’s Rubber Stamp Machine (Erpenbach, Kiley, and Rolfing).
Patrick Starr is an unknown (except as a frequent caller to local radio shows).
Stehly and Neitzert are the only two who have a long term understanding of council processes and city issues.
Which makes Christine Erickson the wildcard on many future votes.
Big surprise. I thought this election was bought and/or rigged like before. Then again, no difference. Half a billion in debt. Huether can’t do any more damage without bond credit or fed funds robbery. Nonetheless, I can remain in Sioux Falls. Brandon has townhomes now but here is starting to look like democracy and individual liberty.
I voted at Hope Lutheran.
Yesterday, this proved to be a VERY POOR CHOICE of a location for voters!!
We were in a small room (I’m guessing about 10 x 15) with NO air circulation and NO regulation voting booths.
There was ONE table with partitions. There were NO signs giving: Instructions To Voters which are always very visible in regulation voting booths.
One of the election workers (the only guy) was so loud and obnoxious I could hardly think.
Message To City of Sioux Falls:
Taxpayer Voters Deserve Better Than This!
When you consider selbergs real job, and his obvious connection to lloyd and his big money donors, just how many votes will he recuse himself from?
Pat Starr has been involved with local politics (Democratic Party) for over 30 years, and knows government and local issues well. Pat is very sharp and I think constituents are going to be pleasently surprised with what he contributes to the new council. I also don’t think he will have much of a learning curve. Fun fact about Pat, he has never missed voting in an election since he has been registered to vote.
Last night was the biggest City election in Sioux Falls history since the Knobe/Schirmer race of ’74.
The number of anti-establishment candidates who won in the City elections last night are reflective of not only the voters disenchantment with the status quo here, but with a mood in this entire country which I think is trending nationally and explains the popularity of presidential candidates like Trump and Cruz to the right and Sanders to the left.
When you factor in that it was a typical low voter turn out with this shift in voter preference still in hand further proves that the normal or typical voters are not happy – even amongst the “1837” who always vote in City/Board elections.
Although, the establishment won in the Board elections, I feel that has more to do with the voters concentrating on the City elections, having sympathy for the Board and their challenge in helping to increase teacher pay with experienced board members (which I think most understand), and one could even make the argument that given Dobberpuhl’s strong showing in a five man race that even the Board was not entirely immune to the voters obvious distain, however.
Selberg, although a part of the establishment, I believe did not win so much as Steele lost because of past comments Steele has made about members of the LGBT community. Plus, there always seems to be that one candidate who bucks the trend.
About twenty years ago, an author whose name and the title of his book leaves me at this time, wrote a book about the election of Jimmy Carter in ’76, which gained local attention, because he cited the Knobe/Schirmer race in ’74 as a seismic example and precursor of political things to come in the following presidential race of 1976 nationally. I feel that last night was another example of Sioux Falls politics depicting what lies a head in the not too distant future for politics at all levels and I think Hawks and Williams should heed these results with the immense capability for both of them in the fall as a result….. They need to tap in to the “Mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore” movement and the sooner the better….
Stehly = Staggers
Neitzert = Jamison
Starr = Anderson
selberg = karsky
I don’t get the excitement. New council looks a lot like the old council. Still have 5 rubber stampers and 3 who will hold the elitist’s feet to the fire.
Wow the Paulson machine couldnt do it with all that big money.Cpuld have run as a man of the people thks for putting , where the money came from.