All the talk lately about who may run for mayor and the possible appointment of Erickson had me thinking. Even though Huether has been out of office for 8 years, there is plenty of ‘bad press’ surrounding his previous term that is still fresh. I guess what I am trying to say it will be hard for him to defend his reputation.
So what is my conspiracy theory? I don’t think he is running, BUT, I think he has been mentoring a candidate and will likely run their campaign. If this person wins (I have NO guesses, but I’m sure it’s some stuffed shirt banker) this would set up an opportunity for Huether to be chief of staff (which basically means he would be running the city like the current COS does).
I base my theory on NO evidence, but a gut feeling about how he operates.
I will admit though, if he does run again, I would rather listen to him talk every night on TV instead the Orange Menace.
The guy who runs Dakota Wuss College thinks he knows who is running for mayor. He basically lifted my predictions that I have had since this summer. You are welcome. But Pitty brings up 3 new names that made me laugh so hard I just about passed out. While we know Erickson, Beck, and Huether will probably run, Pitty says that Councilors Jensen, Merkouris and Selberg are also considering. Pitty says they will have trouble raising money, but it’s NOT money they need to worry about, it is their reputations;
• While Alex was city councilor he gutted the internal audit department to one auditor that basically sends emails to an outside firm. This all came about because he couldn’t properly discipline a city council employee for poor attendance and she ran off to the finance department escaping punishment and got a raise from the mayor to boot. If this guy can’t manage ONE employee, he certainly can’t manage a city. If he announces I will probably piss my pants laughing.
• Oh Marshall. This guy ILLEGALLY lived out of his district for a year (verified by one of his friends) and lied on campaign finance forms. He doesn’t belong in the Mayor’s office, he belongs in a jail cell.
• Rich Merkouris has a pretty clean record, but if you dig, just a little, into his past, you will see he isn’t really respected in the clergy community because of past grifting of a church. It’s a long complicated story that happened several years ago, but the wounds are still fresh, and if you ask the right people, you will get the story.
While I think none of these people are dumb enough to run for mayor, they might. And trust me, I have years and years of proof and data on ALL of the candidates and none of it is good. I think Erickson will rise to the top quickly and will be in the runoff, but who is the darkhorse? Huether may run on the great Trump comeback. Which I find funny, he got the same number of votes in 2020 and 2016.
Greg Jamison told me this summer he would likely not run, and it’s not for the reasons you may think. Greg told me he just wants to spend more time with his family and grandkids, and who can blame him?
I told someone recently that I hope a well intentioned rich person runs for mayor with a good record of community engagement and charity and they will run away with the mayorship. Populism is where it is at these days and no one is interested in electing old (corrupt) hats.
I have a feeling our next mayor will be someone no one has heard of.
You may remember Bonita, she fought against Shape Places and ran for city council in Sioux Falls. She now lives on Marco Island in Florida. There was 6 people running for city council with 4 open seats, all at-large. The two incumbents lost and Bonita came in 3rd place!
BAFFLING ELECTION!
The Trump win was NOT a surprise. Harris ran for president for 107 days and Trump for 10 years. All the indicators were there that she did not have a clear path. I am going to try to keep a clear mind about his term and take it one day at a time. I’m not going to predict darkness, because sometimes those things happen organically 🙂 I do feel sorry for women and immigrants. At least we can drive to Minnesota in 20 minutes!
As for the ballot measures I saw a shift over the past week in sentiment. While I thought the gender thingy in the constitution would pass I was shocked it went down in flames. As a retired female politician said to me recently, “The state constitution hasn’t prevented me from serving the public, I’m voting no.”
I assumed the referred law 21 would go down. Anytime the citizens of SD have a chance to vote down legislation they do. I’m glad because even though I am a tree hugger, I think carbon capture is a farce and makes no sense.
I figured MJ would go down. It was one of the most poorly written ballot measures in state history! So you are allowed to HAVE some of the golden nuggs but you can’t buy it anywhere. WTF? So stupid.
I was surprised by the food tax and abortion, I thought both would pass by a narrow margin. The scare tactics worked. While I voted to eliminate the food tax because I think it is immoral to tax food, I am not disappointed it failed. I told everyone if this passes they will just jack up the retail tax rate on everything else which would actually hurt low income people even more since most of them don’t pay taxes on food anyway (giveaways and SNAP). Even if Abortion would have passed the SD Supreme Court would have thrown it out.
I figured Amendment H would fail, it was to confusing to voters. I supported it, but barely, I think it would have eliminated the SD Dem party. But as an Indy, I get tired of the parties controlling everything. I really think our country needs to move to a non-partisan system.
Most of the ballot measures were poorly written and were NOT 100% ready to be implemented. Almost every measure would have to go thru the legislature to be ‘adjusted’. That is a piss poor way to write these measures, they failed mostly because of the horrible language.
I’m willing to give Trump a chance, because I don’t really have choice. I tell my never Trumpers, take a deep breath and stay patient and queue the circus music! Hopefully the Dems take Congress so we can stop some of the nuttiness, but that also means NOTHING will get done over the next 4 years! Oh, and Ukrainians will need to learn Russian and the Palestinians, Hebrew. You can kiss the ‘two state solution’ goodbye.
There is this display on South Minnesota Avenue, someone placed PRO-Abortion signs with Sue Peterson signs. I know who lives there, seems like something they would do, LOL.