RC Mayoral Candidate, Allender struggles with the Constitution

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While I agree with Allender on the ban of certain kinds of ammo and firearms, he seems to be struggling a little with the US Constitution (From his FB page);

allender-constitution

Good thing Sam cleared it up for him;

The chief and I are in serious disagreement here. Defending the Constitution is everyone’s job, especially elected public officials. It may interest the chief to know that the first line of the Oath of Office for the mayor of Rapid City reads as follows:

“I solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States…”

Hey! Sam, you might want to pass that little tidbit of civic advice onto our police department, city attorney’s office, mayor’s office and the city council, some of them don’t seem to get that whole ‘oath’ thingy.

Why doesn’t Allender just apologize?

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I have been watching the Rapid City mayoral race closely (or somewhat closely) and the first thing I say to my West River brothers is “Why in the Hell would you elect a former Police Chief as mayor?”

Then there is the Landfill issue . . .

Either way, I would think that the good people of Rapid City would be smart enough to NOT elect someone who might be a supposed racist, but what is more troublesome, can’t say “Sorry.”

Not that I would compare our mayor to Allender, but MMM often makes weird statements around minorities (including women), but not in a racist way but more out of ignorance. He told a kid clearly of either Pakistanian or Indian decent (8th grader) at a school in one of his ‘Shut Up and Listen’ sessions that “Just because you are a different color then me, doesn’t mean you can’t be mayor of Sioux Falls.” The kid looked at him like ‘what planet did this guy come from?’

Then he spoke at First Baptist and the crowd was mostly African immigrants, he said to them about code enforcement, “Not only do white people need to be good neighbors, but colored people need to also.”
I know South Dakota is mostly behind the times, but when are we going to get with the program with race relations or at least understanding other cultures? Heck, we had the first Black president of the United States visit our state yesterday (I watched the entire commencement LIVE) and he gave a moving and inspiring message, while our NON-education governor in the background stared at the arena lights.
Pretty amazing that a BLACK man can come to South Dakota and make such an inspiring speech . . . I guess colored folk know how to make speeches to, who knew? 😉

Rapid City Mayor helps collect signatures to put Civic Center on ballot

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Mayor Kooiker continues to surprise me every day;

Kooiker, who estimated he personally collected about 400 signatures, said he was pleased that the City Council’s decision to approve $180 million in bonds for a new civic center arena will be put to a public vote.

What I find amazing about what Sam did, is that not only did he support a public vote, he helped collect signatures. This is in stark reality to our mayor who told everyone he supported snow gates, but when asked to sign the petition to put them on the ballot, he refused, as did many local politicians, including our Secretary of State elect Shantel Krebs, who told petition gathers after refusing to sign, “Initiatives/referendums should be illegal in South Dakota.” Interesting statement from the person that is now in charge of our elections 🙁

I want to commend Mayor Kooiker for standing up for democracy in South Dakota and setting an example for other elected officials who don’t really understand the process that well.