Rapid City Mayor’s Race: Fraud or Not?

Why can't Madison ever have a mayoral campaign this fun?

On Mount Blogmore, Kevin Woster notes that Rapid City mayoral candidate Sam Kooiker continues to brand the man he wants to replace, Mayor Alan Hanks, with the word "fraud," even though the courts have yet to find any fraud.

Kooiker himself climbs the Mount to respond. While he gets a little confused (again) about the meaning of positive versus negative, Kooiker maintains that he has exposed fraud. Fraud figures prominently in the charges Kooiker levels on his campaign website. Woster and blog frequent-flyer Bill Fleming ask who exactly is guilty of this purported fraud.

Then Don Frankenfeld joins the conversation:

Sam, and Ron Wiefenbach, deserve great credit for bringing the problem forward. Hanks and his minions deserve blame for acting defensively instead of pursuing the problem right away. No one claims Hanks committed fraud, only that he is a lousy manager who makes mistakes and avoids admitting them. If this were an isolated case of incompetence, forgiveness might be in order. But it is part of a pattern, which includes an effort to illegally transfer sacred park land to the School District (exposed and reversed at the last second), failure to collect more than $160,000 in taxes that should have been due from Cabela's, an ability to improperly charge citizens improper zoning fees but not to refund them, and the purchase of a $5,000 timer for council meetings. Hanks deserves not forgiveness but thanks and farewell [Don Frankenfeld, comment, Mount Blogmore, 2011.06.09].

As rhetorical gravy, Frankenfeld then analogizes the absence of any fraud convictions to the O.J. Simpson trial. Uff da! Now Alan Hanks is O.J.!

The discussion reminds me of my posting on the sales tax kickback Madison is giving to the Mitchell-based owners of Custom Touch Homes. The Madison Daily Leader rejected the first draft of my letter on the topic because I used the word kickback. "...[T]he word kickback," said the editor, "implies an illegal act, which you do not want to accuse anyone of." I grumbled, but for the newspaper, I changed the word to handout, which passed their editorial muster.

Again, I'm just watching from afar. Hanks and Kooiker are both Republicans, so it doesn't matter much to me who wins, as long as the next mayor doesn't ban me from the city (I'd like to eat at the Firehouse again).

But with words like fraud, obstruction of justice, and gross incompetence thrown around, and with candidates speaking up in the blogosphere, Rapid City is putting on an entertaining political show for the rest of us.