South Dakota municipal elections are non-partisan. Candidates for mayor and city council don't run as Democrats or Republicans because the law doesn't allow it and because local issues break down as much more practical than partisan.
Pat Powers mistakes municipal elections for partisan contests and declares the Spearfish, Lead, and Deadwood mayoral races as big wins for Republicans. Um, yeah, Mayors-elect Boke, Apa, and Turbiville are known Republicans. Apa's opponent Les Roselles appears to be a Democrat, but Boke's opponent Jerry Krambeck is a Republican. I don't have a party affiliation on Turbiville's opponent Jim Van Den Eykel.
But if anyone's keeping score, up in Huron, Paul Aylward beat Kerwin Haeder pretty soundly to become Huron's new mayor. Aylward is a union man. Haeder is a Palin-Republican and father of Beadle County Republican Party chair Josh Haeder.
And most sensible Huron voters neither know nor care.
Apa looks like hell: Les will do well in a special election; turnout in Deadwood was abysmal and red state collapse is assured.
On the issue of partisan trivia, Mitchell has its Lincoln day dinner tonight with Marion Rounds speaking. When he blatantly panders to veterans by asking them to stand and be recognized, Stace Nelson, Sibby, any anybody else with any decency should call on non-veteran Rounds to sit his *** down and quit pretending he's entitled to stand with the vets. And get it on video for a future Stace Nelson campaign commercial. "Sit down Mr. Rounds. You're not a veteran. Have the decency not to stand as if you were a veteran."
Mr. Apa has all sorts of plans. Watch Lead lead all of the hills communities in the near future.
Lead, and by extension, Mr. Apa, are likely federal welfare queens of the first order. They were apparently smugly content to be a company town and leading citizens thereof for nearly a century. Then when Homestake / Hearst pulled out the faux shocked citizens suddenly realized they had to pay for their own water/sewer/utility etc., services. They become the nation's most pandering, federal welfare town for years. It's likely that the center of Mr. Apa's agenda is pandering to Thune and NOem for more federal aid.
Lead is one of two communities in SD that receives no state aid for its school system. Yes there is a great tax base around Lead, but to speak of a pandering without giving us your success's and absence of aid inspires me to believe the failures that aggrieve you on the outside feed those very demons in your belly. How did you spend your government check John?
Pat Powers is completely and irrevocably delusional.