I’m hearing from a source that Alex Jensen had to submit his petitions twice. This is his 2nd set that have validated him for the ballot.
I’m not quite sure what was wrong with his first submittal, but I think one of the sheets was invalid which would have put him up short of the 200 valid signatures.
Ironically, there are many signatures on his current petitions that are invalid (but he does have the threshold – and they have to be challenged within 5 days of submittal). So no problems on the 2nd time around.
While running for office can be complicated, let’s face it kids, gathering a couple hundred signatures should be the easy part. Oh, and you should probably tell the wifey not to store her petition sheets in the bathtub, just saying.
UPDATE: So it gets even better, Erickson actually went out and got nominating petition signatures for Neitzert, who is the sitting city councilor incumbent running against a Democrat. Ethics be damned!
Rick actually did two articles. ONE & TWO. He makes a great point;
City Council member Christine Vinatieri Erickson used her title on an invite raising money to a candidate opposing a sitting City Council member. Did she break the law? Probably not. But using her official title on an invitation to the event to me crossed an ethical line. Sure she can give money to any candidate, and she can use her first amendment right to speak in favor of or against any candidate, but sponsoring a political fundraiser to unseat a fellow council member to me is over the top. It crosses that ethical line.
Like I said a few days ago, completely legal, but it looks a little ‘sketchy’. I had a discussion the other day with a foot soldier about this topic, and he said something that made sense. “It’s because these people (Erickson & TenHaken) are partisans.” It started to make sense. In legislative races, this kind of activity goes on all the time, because they are partisan races. But in a non-partisan government like the Sioux Falls City Council, playing partisan games just doesn’t fly. It is even more curious, because the Mayor and at least 6 city councilors are Republican. Ethics aside, it just looks ‘odd’. Why bring these kind of games into a non-partisan race? At a recent council meeting, TenHaken compared himself to John Thune (I know, eyeroll). What is obvious to me is that he doesn’t understand the role of a non-partisan city government when he makes ridiculous and ignorant statements like this. If Stehly or anybody else decides to run against Jensen, it’s only going to get more partisan. I have a feeling this will become one of the messiest municipal election campaign seasons we have seen in a long time. Pull up your boots.
Whether Stehly or someone else runs against Jensen they really need to look at his voting record. He never sponsored any legislation himself and only co-sponsored two bills, one failed.
He voted for the half-penny sales tax increase for teacher pay, that has failed miserably yet we continue to pay. So we know how he stands on tax increases.
He also has several votes discriminating against transgender youth.
He voted against background checks for concealed carry permit.
He also co-sponsored a youth minimum wage (which was later overturned by an initiative).
It seems Jensen’s ‘Proven’ record is higher taxes, less gun safety and discrimination against young people. With a record like that, who wouldn’t support him?
A friend asked their banker recently an interesting question (the bank is a national chain that has several branches in SF). They brought up Alex Jensen running for city council and being a business banker for First Premier and asked if their bank would allow this? He said, ‘Absolutely NOT’. He saw it as a major conflict of interest especially if the bank was seeking to do business with the city. Currently First Premier has an exclusive contract with the city of Sioux Falls. They used to spread the city’s accounts around to several banks in town, but the last mayor ended that.
Finance Director Pritchett has suggested though that a new RFP should be probably put out. Yah think?
l3wis 
