Who Appointed the Sioux Falls 2035 Downtown Committee Members?

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I will give you the short answer, Mayor Paul TenHaken (Item #25).

The City Council will vote on a resolution approving the committee and its members. I asked a city councilor if the council was asked by mayor’s office for input. They said they were not asked but not sure about the other council members. I think it is unfair to the council not to have input on at least half of the picks (there are 16 members).

While you go through the list you will notice people on it that have something to do with downtown businesses and organizations. Two of the members even previously worked at DTSF. But two of the members have incredible conflicts of interest with the mayor, Kevin Tupy (Cresten Capital Holdings) and Natalie Eisenberg (CEO of Click Rain).

Natalie’s conflict is obvious since she now runs the company that Paul founded, but Kevin’s is a little more tricky.

Kevin with one of his investment partners, Matt Paulson, threw tons of money at Alex Jensen’s campaign, so he is politically connected to the city using his wealth for influence. He has also been buying up property downtown like a madman so he financially connected to how DTSF is shaped. Ironically Paulson’s director of StartUP Sioux Falls, Brienne Maner, also is an appointee to the committee.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many people on the board who have some financial interest in DTSF, and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem is Tupy’s connections politically and financially that make this appear unethical.

What often frustrates me about Paul’s appointments is he doesn’t really extend out from his inner circle, his youth council showed that, where NO O’Gorman students sit on the council and most are kids of friends of his.

I would hope the council asks why they were not asked to participate and about the conflicts.

Posted in: Downtown Sioux Falls, Mayor TenHaken, SF City Council, Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City CounTcilor Jensen’s final campaign finance report is revealing, but expected

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What do you get when a hospital lawyer, an ad agency exec, a banker, a developer, an angel fund investor and a guy who does business out of a UPS Store PO Box join forces? One heck of a political action committee. (PAC)

We all knew that there would be more money funneled into Jensen’s campaign chest after the last finance report before the election. He received an additional $13K coming from the Buffalo PAC. Curiously he didn’t spend it all, in fact he only spent about $3K on the campaign in it’s waning days (Full report). Curiously he spent around $8,500 on legal fees ($1,000 donated). I’m assuming that was for the recount. What I find ironic is that with all the money and power swirling around the SD GOP who helped get Alex elected that not one single lawyer took him on pro-bono for the recount. Stehly’s (a Republican) attorney, the Chair of the SD Democratic Party, Randy Seiler offered his services for free to Theresa. So basically the donors to the Buffalo PAC and ultimately Jensen funneled money to a Republican Law Firm (Redstone). I know, mind boggling.

Curiously the PAC is registered to a Sioux Falls residential address, a home owned by a SF hospital attorney (not the green one) and an ad agency executive (the big one in town). Both of them also have a connection (still trying to figure out) to a Sioux Falls city director that TenHaken appointed. Strangely they were only used as conduit because none of them donated to the PAC.

So who did? Well the usual suspects, with two of them pouring thousands of dollars towards Alex through various PACs, family members and individual donations. I’m surprised they didn’t find a way to get dead relatives to give since it is against the law now to use your toddler children.

BUFFALO PAC DONORS:

Matthew Paulson – $5,000.00 (Jensen’s campaign treasurer and suspected manager)

Dana Dykhouse – $5,000.00

Crescent Venture Capital (Kevin Tupy ) – $2,000.00

Daniel Costello – $1,000.00

Yes, I know, not surprising since most of these characters already had been throwing money at Jensen’s campaign. I wonder if they knew he gave half of their donation to a law firm?

Posted in: Alex Jensen, Count-cilor Alex Jensen, Elections, Randy Seiler, SF City Council, Sioux Falls, Theresa Stehly

Count Jensen’s endorsement list disappears from Facebook

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While this endorsement list still is on ‘another’ blog, the post was deleted from Jensen’s and SF Politics Facebook pages. I’m not sure why. I wonder if some of the people listed got a little nervous? I wasn’t reading the comments, but I heard there was some negativity about the big wheels on the list. Here is the list. I don’t know all of the people that are listed, but the ones I do know are heavy hitters in the bankster and development community;

James Abbott
Jaclyn and Micah Aberson
Jake Anderson
Vince Anderson
John Archer
Katie Ashmore
Catherine and David Barranco
Lisa and Miles Beacom
Tanner Beukelman
Deb and Jack Billion
Raquel Blount
Paige and Matt Bock
Dennis Breske
Ryan Brown
Vernon Brown
Molly and Ryan Budmayr
Dr. Seri and Shad Carney
Dr. Tom and Ginny Christopherson
Dan Costello
Kent Cutler
Emily and Chris Daugaard
Linda and Dennis Daugaard
Dan Doyle
Drew Duncan
Dana Dykhouse
Joel Dykstra
Troy and Natalie Eisenberg
Jim Entenman
Councilor Christine and Tony Erickson
Scott Erickson
Julio Espino
Rick Everist
Rob Fagnan
Lucas Fiegen
Laura and Ryan Gardner		Shelly and Mike Gardner
James Gaspar
Tyler Goff
Dustin Haber
Craig Hagen
Alex Halbach
Larry Hamre
Chad Hatch
Brent Hodgkiss
Jordan Huisman
Tom Hurlbert
Mike Jamison
Russ Janklow
Anna and Brad Jankord
Maren and Max Jensen
Maria Harrington and Sam Jensen
Paula and Bill Jensen
Brendan Johnson
Troy Jones
Macy Kaiser
Jon Kirby
Steve Kirby
Ryan Konz
Kate and Nick Kotzea
Molly and Josh Kuehl
Reggie Kuipers
Scott Lawrence
Mark Lee
Mark Lovre
Alexis Konstant and Marcus Mahlen
Alissa and Eric Matt
Eric McDonald
Amanda and Tom McKnelly
Mark Mickelson
Doug Muth		Martha and Tom Nelson
Tony Nour
Erik Nyberg
Rob Oliver
Karine and Matt Paulson
Marianne and Steve Perkins
Deb Peters
Rachel Petersen
Lucas Peterson
Kia and Ryan Pidde
Nikki Rassmussan
David Ratchford
Tony Reiss
Dave Roetman
Joel Rosenthal
Amber Rouse
Dave Rozenboom
Steve Sarbacker
Darrell Schmith
Matt Schoppert
Cindy Schoppert-Pickett
Dr. Ryan and Cady Sivertson
Alex Soundy
Ryan Spellerberg
Brad Stearns
Bob and Lori Sutton
Chris Thorkelson
Bobbi and Luke Tibbetts
Kevin Tupy
Carol Twedt
Ryan Tysdal
Tony Venhuizen
Sara Waldner
Anna and Dane Yde
Bishop Emeritus David Zellmer
Posted in: Alex Jensen, Elections, SF City Council, Sioux Falls

UPDATE II: Mysterious LLCs donate $2,500 to Jensen’s campaign

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UPDATE II: Here is an updated Jensen donor list with references to the businesses/employment the donors are associated with.

This is even better where it breaks down it down into donor groups.

Besides the fact that Alex has gotten $10,000 from Dennis Dopey our former governor, he also raked in big contributions from local developers and banksters in town. READ FULL REPORT.

Less than 7% was small donations of $100 or less.

But one of the most interesting contributions came from a list of 3 LLC’s ran by this guy, Kevin Tupy. They all have the same PO box address at the UPS store. I always get a kick out of how people try to hide their identity when giving to political campaigns or wiggling around the rules. If Tupy gave individually he would have only been able to give $1,000 but this little trick was able to put his contribution up to $2,500 while hiding his identity. Notice he did NOT give an individual donation.

Even more interesting is that Mr. TenHaken’s PAC did not give any money to Jensen. No worries, I’m sure he will be plugging money into it the second round of fundraising because that report won’t come out until right before the election.

Even though Jensen has raised a lot of money, I’m curious when he will actually be campaigning? Even if Stehly does not run (I think she will) wouldn’t you want to be campaigning in case you have another challenger? I have heard NOTHING about his stances on the issues. Does he have any? People have told me he knows little about city government and will get mopped by Stehly in any forum or debate.

I still believe Stehly can beat Jensen by at least 6 points without spending a single penny. And if she does, there is going to be a lot of sore LLCs and PACs in town 🙂

UPDATE: I also find it interesting that $18,000 in donations came from out of Sioux Falls ($10K-Daugaard, $8K from other towns). Mostly from High Profile Republicans and PACS, this tells me they are making this race partisan. While I did see a ‘couple’ of the donors are indies or Dems, that I know of, this is about getting an ‘establishment’ Republican elected. Stehly, though a Republican, has always performed her roll non-partisan (because, that is what the seat is). I think there are people in the party who want to kick her out, but I also know there are many that like her.

There was a recent Argus article/survey it asked people to identify local politicians, media, celebrities, etc. Theresa was on the survey, she got 44% of people being able to recognize her. Christine Erickson was on the survey to, she got 26%. Would have been interesting to see Jensen and Huether on the list.

SF Councilor Theresa Stehly 44%

Governor Kristi Noem 90%

Sen. John Thune 85%

Sen. Mike Rounds 83%

Rep. Dusty Johnson 80%

Mayor Paul TenHaken 75%

Councilor Christine Erickson 26%

SFSB President Cynthia Mickelson 21%

Lt. Governor Larry Rhoden 15%

I told a friend last night that if Stehly decides to run, the best move by Alex would be to drop out, send the donations back and save himself the embarrassment.

Posted in: Alex Jensen, Elections, SF City Council, Sioux Falls, Theresa Stehly