Welcome to a new series of posts I’m doing about candidates that I just can’t get behind. And the inaugural story is regarding a candidate that started out as kind of just “meh, I don’t know anything about them,” but as I looked it just got… well, pretty bad.
And in this instance, I’m talking about Kevin Quick, Republican Candidate for District 35 State Senate.
Nevermind he was the west river coordinator for one of the pot petitions on the ballot this year. While that might be reason enough to say no to him, there are flaws that go far, far deeper. And the deeper you get in the rabbit hole, the more you seem to find. So anyway, Kevin Quick for District 35 Senate.
Yes, the pot petition coordinator position is out there. Otherwise, the only other thing you generally see on the surface is that he owns a vape shop in Rapid City. So I started doing some basic digging.. And I tried to find out some basic voter registration information, but I hit a roadblock. Tried looking up his voter registration and voter history.. and there was nothing there. No voter registration appeared to exist prior to him being a candidate.
In fact, I had to go to the live data on the Secretary of State’s website to find him. He literally just appeared on voter rolls in the past month or two.
And I started digging further. Here’s where things kind of go Tiger King on us. A bit of a deeper web search brought up a picture Kevin might want to forget, From Mugshots.com dated about 2012:
Granted, it’s 7 or 8 years old, and they’re some fairly petty crimes, but typically candidates don’t end up with mugshots. But it led me down another path that I had to check… and I came up with things that are kind of hard to unsee. Given that it appears Kevin Quick has had some run-ins with John Law in at least one other state, I checked South Dakota. And here’s where it goes off the rails:
District 35 Senate Candidate Kevin Quick and his South Dakota Rap Sheet by Pat Powers on Scribd
Getting a bench warrant for failure to appear on an illegal lane change is kind of embarrassing. I mean he actually pled Nolo Contendre to a traffic violation (2020)?
And while that might have been embarrassing, being arrested for multiple counts of failure to pay sales tax in 2018 (and getting 2-days jail time for it) is worse. In addition to the fact that as a business owner, he used a taxpayer-paid public defender to get his bacon out of the fire.
If we’re going to continue to go down this path we have the 2017 felony conviction for possession of a controlled substance that Quick pled guilty to. And nevermind that 2017 arrest for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon that he pled down to “simple assault to put another in fear of bodily harm” when they rolled up all his charges together. (Again, taxpayer funded public defender)
Need another sharp turn? If you look at the UJS record search report…
Quick was granted suspended imposition of sentence for his felony drug conviction, and all the other charges on 3/25/20 (which resulted in him being sentenced to 4 years in the State Pen, which were suspended). And what happens after that?
If you go to the Secretary of State’s website, you can see when he filed his petitions for office:
Literally, on the heels of being given a suspended imposition of sentence for a number of bad acts, 5 days later, Quick files petitions to run for State Senate?
I’m noping out of this one. Drugs, assault, and not paying your taxes? Sorry, but District 35 Republican State Senate Candidate Kevin Quick is a candidate I just can’t get behind.
Violent criminal is a non-starter for me.
“Here’s where things kind of go Tiger King on us”
Nyuk nyuk.
For anyone interested, I had a bench warrant issued for my arrest awhile back. 76 in a 65 .. failed to pay it. Forgot about it, actually. There was no mens rea, although I did get victimized by a $90 fine for 11 over a speed limit.
I am not a fan of enforced speed limits, but I digress.
I tried to pull-up my mugshot, but the site you mention had an annoying click-bait paywall and I bailed. Can you post my mugshot, too? 😀 Or, you could just email it to me johnisarebel at plainstribune dot com
So, for anyone wanting to try to smear me, you can find my mugshot from spending some time in the Deadwood Jail house. Yup. That’s right. I spent some time in the ol’ pokey .. felt just like Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles.
When I left, and the lady was nice, although I didn’t get any kind of food or water or access to a bathroom for the ENTIRE time I was there.
It was an agonizing ~25 minutes, but I have paid my debt to society.
Also, I have now legit spent time in a world-famous hoosegow, so I got that going for me, which is nice. If you’re going to spend that much time behind bars, why not world-famous Deadwood, South Dakota?!
Props to the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department – they were nice and a good time was had by all.
Public Defenders are NOT taxpayer funded in South Dakota. In fact, we are one of the ONLY States in the US that makes a defendant pay to exercise their Constitutionally protected right to legal counsel.
* In South Dakota, if a defendant can PROVE to the courts they cannot afford to hire their own attorney the Courts will assign a Public Defender. They ARE initially paid for by the State (taxpayer). Regardless of the cases outcome, a lien is place on that person/their property until the debt is fulfilled…and they collect AGGRESSIVELY through the South Dakota Debt Obligation Recovery Center. Consequences of missed payments can include: The State putting a hold on Drivers License renewal, car registration renewal & denial of hunting and fishing licenses
Phish
Court appointed counsel IS public funded by the property tax payers in the county where a criminal defendant like Mr Quick choose to exercise that right. The county then gets a lien, and most of these interest free loans are never paid. I don’t know if Mr Quick has repaid the Pennington County property taxpayers for his criminal activities. Those liens , I believe, are public record. Somebody should check and see I find he is still in debt to the Pennington County property tax payers for his assorted criminal activities and related expenses.
Pat,
This is too bad. We need some common sense, law abiding, unwacko folks to run in District 35, particularly for the House. This guy just doesn’t cut the mustard whatsoever.
It is like a grab bag with these legislators…you can be sane or conservative not both…frustrating to many of us who are sane and conservative
Mr Quick is endorsed endorsed by Larry Kurtz