SD Municipal Elections '06

Interesting night.

For the first hour, it looked like Bruce Halverson and Vernon Brown would be fighting over the second SF mayor run-off spot. But then Halverson pulled ahead and stayed there the rest of the night. And, of course, current mayor Dave Munson came out with the most votes. I find this turn of events kind of funny. When Munson dropped out of the race, he talked Halverson into running for mayor. This also led to Halverson getting a lot of the money Munson would've if he hadn't dropped out. Then, to everyone's surprise, Munson re-entered the race. So, it's interesting that he decided to run against a candidate that he basically sponsored.

And now they will have to continue to run against each other. They're friends with each other, so I bet it's going to be hard for them to run against one another. But, being that they are friends, I hope to see a very low amount of mudslinging.

I was surprised that Darrin Smith only managed 4th place. I figured he'd at least get 3rd or maybe compete with Halverson for 2nd.

Janoct Ajda's turnout is about what I expected. He went into this trying for a word-of-mouth campaign. That's almost impossible to start yourself. Word-of-mouth only works when the voters start it. It's too bad, because I liked a lot of the things he said.

And finally there's Dan Christopherson. I called it! After constantly telling people not to vote for him, I knew he would still get some votes since his name was still on the ballot. I guessed it would be between 0.5% and 2% of the vote. And he ended up with 0.72%. I was amused by that.

It was kind of good to see Gary Aguiar lose the Brookings mayoral election, after the news came out of the help he solicited from his students. Not cool.

The only other election I followed was the one for Canton commissioner. I wasn't thrilled with the results because of some rumors I've heard... but I'll hold of judgment until I see what Michele Magnuson does in office. One thing that was troubling was a lot of people in Canton had been saying that we needed "new blood on the commission" or "a woman's voice." But if they didn't like what was going on with the commission, why didn't they show up to any of the meetings to discuss the issues? Whatever.