In Rapid City, former City Councilman Jason Salamun eclipsed the rest of the field and will be the new mayor by fewer than 300 votes after other candidates seemed to split the vote against Laura Armstrong who came in second.
According to the Rapid City Journal,
Salamun unofficially took 32% of voters with 4,888 votes Tuesday, topping Laura Armstrong by only 269 votes.
and..
Unofficial results show Laura Armstrong came in second with 4,619 votes, Ron Weifenbach third with 2,999, Brad Estes fourth with 2,769, and Josh Lyle with 150.
Brad Estes was by far the strongest fundraiser, but as one observer noted to me, he just did not have an effective stage presence in debates.
This race might be characterized by – surprisingly – not being a complete circus sideshow. Which is doing pretty good for Rapid City.
On the other hand, we have the school board race…
Rapid City School Board – Area 4
| Walter Swan Jr. (N) | 507 |
|
| Amy Sazue (N) | 488 |
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| Karen S. Woods (N) | 437 |
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| Gerald Harvey (N) | 193 |
|
I have to ask – who were the 193 idiots who voted for the guy tweeting for execution of Democrats, who had two protection orders, among his many issues? Because they should not be allowed to pick any more school board members.
Low turnout compared to pierre.
Not kidding – Laura Armstrong is progressive enough to be the Mayor of San Francisco. Rapid City dodged a major, major bullet last night. Salamun is a perfect fit for Rapid City – Christian, Conservative, and sane. Expect big things from him if he wants to purse future political opportunities.
Also, it’s a shame RC did away with runoffs. The four Rs almost split the vote and doomed RC. In a runoff, Salamun would beat Armstrong 70-30!
” Rapid City dodged a major, major bullet last night.”
We didn’t just dodge a bullet, we dodged a rocket propelled grenade! I hope there is a push to bring back the runoffs after this close call.
“Dodged” is the operative word. With a margin that small whoo-wee – Rapid City is going blue soon
RC has no chance of going blue in the near future if they can get a couple things figured out. 70% of voters supported a Republican candidate. Plus, Jason will run for re-election.
1.) Get the operatives together behind-the-scenes before the election and never allow four Rs to take one one D again
2.) Bring back runoffs
Typical lib spin…devoid of the truth about the situation.
70% of voters picked a Republican for Mayor. As the wise Mr. Schoenbeck once said, you must have rocks in your head.
I’m bookmarking this comment section – you should too – I’ll see you back here in 2028!
Why 2028? I thought the mayor term was 4 years so the next election will be in 2027. Oh, you must be of the liberal mindset so 2023 + 4 = 2028, so that’s close enough. Got it.
Congratulations to Mr. Salamun, Kevin Maher, and the other winners.
Strongly agree RC should bring back runoffs.
The next time this happens, I hope the conservative candidates get together and talk this out before the election. We almost got a liberal mayor because three conservative egos got the better of them. Most conservatives agreed Jason was best. The other three should have stepped aside and put their backing behind him.
Also, Jason needs to work to being back the simple majority rule. What a nightmare this could have been. But it’s great knowing libs represent less than 1/3 of the voters in RC. This is what I figured. Too bad KEVN / KOTA still pretends conservatives don’t exist. I wonder where Austin Goss is these days…
The thought Austin Goss called himself a reporter is disgusting. Immature little guy. Don’t call us Austin. We won’t answer.
BRIGHT future for RC with Jason Salamun as mayor. He was articulate, knew all the answers, never snarky answering questions and totally changed our original plan to vote for Brad Estes. Brad is a great guy, no doubt about it, but he was Jason’s opposite at all 9 forums. Mayor Salamun will represent the populace of RC well!!
A mayor who received 32% of the vote, 68% vote against him. Hardly a mandate to do anything.
70 percent preferred a male, so he has that going for him. 31 percent voter turnout is a 69-percent “don’t bother me” mandate.
Still only receiver 32% of the vote, no matter how you try to spin it. RC needs to go back to a runoff system. It is too easy to question the legitimacy of a candidate who receives less than one third of the vote.
if you want to doubt that salamun would win a runoff against armstrong, just to spend the money and prove it, ok. this illustrates the explanation armstrong gives for not spending money for a runoff, i.e. the top votegetter wins anyway. not true in the first hanks v kookier race, and probably not true had armstrong won but had to face a runoff.
re: legitimacy – this begs the question of the relative legitimacy of an election with 31 percent turnout, or even less turnout which is the norm. the only way to ditch a runoff is to get 50 percent plus 1 or more votes the first time.
The simple fact is he received 32% of the vote. Your comments about voter turnout are irrelevant My understanding is that this was the second highest turnout for a municipal election. There should be a runoff election.
fact: crunching the numbers shows that only 32 pct of only 31 pct of all registered voters chose salamun. that’s ten percent or so. you point out that 31 pct is practically a record high for rc municipal election turnout. so at best if he got every vote cast, he’d go into office at the stated behest of no more than 31 pct of the city’s registered voters. at low turnout levels it’s harder to argue that anyone has clinched a city-wide mandate in the vote result. a runoff settles the winner by clarifying one picayune result with a subsequent picayune result. so at the end of the argument i agree there should be one so that nearly useless arguments like this one don’t clog the civic discourse.
Looks like the ultra right wingers lost control of the RCAS board. New officers are sure to follow.
the old ones will still be blamed, don’t worry.
Looks like the ultra left wingers represent less than 1/3 of the voters. Praise Jesus!