Does Jamie Smith have a fighting chance?

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Maybe.

If you would have asked me this question the day he announced, I would have fell over laughing.

Money is the name of the game, and we could easily talk the issues, etc., but that is what wins.

But we are in strange times;

• Roe vs. Wade was overturned.

• The red state of Kansas overturned it in their state . . .

• Amendment C failed in SoDak.

We could also talk about plane trips, cheating and nepotism, but we won’t go there.

Social media today was on fire that internal and external polling show Jamie Smith is closing the GAP and is within Billie Sutton territory.

My family homesteaded in SoDak on both sides of the tree, I grew up here and my families have deep roots. No one was specifically conservative or liberal in my family, just caring, patriotic and faithful. One thing South Dakotans don’t like is liars and cheaters. Ironically, Noem could lose this race, by simply being a loser (and a liar and cheater).

If Wholestone Foods decides to sue over the petition, who will foot the settlement?

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As I have mentioned in the past, I believe the petition is unconstitutional and violates state law due to property rights.

The city council must approve the petition for the next election, but who is ultimately responsible if the petition passes voters (I think it will get over 70% approval).

If Wholestone Foods little loophole butcher shop trick does not work, they may sue the city. The defense fund would likely come from the Public Assurance Alliance, but if the city looses and WF wants damages (legal bills, etc.) it would be the taxpayers that would have to foot the bill.

I encourage you to vote NO on the petition, not because I want another sh!t factory in Sioux Falls, but because it doesn’t have the legal muster to stand, and we could ultimately be paying for it, and NOT the petitioners.

This is probably the reason they decided to do the petition. By having the voting taxpayers of this city change the law, it puts the liability on us. The petitioners could have easily just used the money to fight WF in court themselves, but this way they can wash their hands of the legal implications. Very piggish of them.

Why won’t Smart Growth Sioux Falls tell us who is funding them?

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You know that old saying, ‘Follow the Money’. It was true when it was originally stated and still true today. If a candidate or ballot initiative is worthy of voters support they should be transparent about who is funding the campaigns.

Just look at the little trick the Mayor pulled giving $17,500 to a non-incumbent candidate thru his PAC and cleverly hiding it from the voters by giving the money AFTER the final reporting period before the election. But, Hey, I have never accused PTH of being transparent.

Fast forward to the folks trying to stop Wholestone (they will fail). They say they won’t release the names though many have speculated it involves a certain business mogul who owns gobs of housing development land around the proposed packing plant. They can only run for so long since the finance report is due in September.

Why not get a head of the hubbub and just tell people now who is funding the campaign? Oh that’s right, because it has partisan Republican hacks running the campaign and funding it. Robert Peterson who is the son and basement dweller of Bill and Sue Peterson (former and current legislators) is running a childish and non-transparent campaign. While telling voters and petition signers this is about the stench of a packing plant it is really about land investment. I have said all along of Peterson and his cabal of campaign investors were really concerned about the smell of dead hogs they would have written a petition that bans ALL large scale packing plants in Sioux Falls which would send the Chinese Communists running the S-Hole plant downtown literally packing and would have also stopped WF from building or expanding.

There has all been a lot of crying from the campaign that the city council and mayor are not helping them. Let me clue you in as to why. If the city government would make even the smallest attempt to stop WF, they would get their asses sued (in other words the taxpayers would get sued). The land is already owned by WF and zoned properly according to Shape Places. The city has no options in stopping it.

There is also another factor the campaign won’t tell us about, immigrant workforce. WF has already said they will likely build housing for an immigrant workforce adjacent to the packing plant.

One thing I have learned from being a part of a petition that was thrown out by the city is that you should always have the lawyers look at your petition before you move forward and make sure it is rock solid. I saw issues with this before they even collected one signature.

Like I said, it will likely pass over 75%, but it won’t really matter, because they found a loophole and all the crying in the world won’t stop it now.

UPDATE: Mayor TenHaken’s PAC dumps $17,500 into Dr. Sarah Cole’s Campaign

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Bought and paid for.

That was my argument all along with Cole’s candidacy. A person who hasn’t bothered to vote in a local election the entire time she has lived here (another story our incredibly inept local media never touched). It’s one thing for the mayor to endorse a candidate running against an incumbent, it’s whole other ball of wax to dump this amount of money (after the final financial disclosure before the election) towards the challenger.

You have to be one major bitter, vengeful, vindictive person to go above and beyond to eliminate an incumbent, who ironically voted for almost 99% of the mayor’s policies.

Notice how the listing of the PAC is also improper (it should be Next Generation Leadership PAC). It is also concerning that the PAC itself has yet to file their July financial report. Yesterday at 5 PM was the deadline.

You will also notice that Cole spent almost $23K on advertising and over $5k on consulting. Ironically, Rich Merkouris almost spent the exact same amount on advertising. Cole never voted in a municipal election before. She never raised her own campaign funds and it appears she had little to do with running the campaign.

UPDATE: I did find the PAC’s filings on the SOS website. The original filing was in May and an amended one in June. It is pretty clear that the entities and individuals who gave to the PAC knew exactly where the money was going;