In times like these it\u2019s instructive to rely on the insight of the great Austin Powers: \u201cWhat does it all mean Basil?\u201d<\/p>\n
Since the wee hours of Wednesday that\u2019s the question that\u2019s been rolling around when it comes to the still undetermined race for Sioux Falls mayor and the results of the three City Council elections.<\/p>\n
What does it say about the current state of the Sioux Falls electorate, the people who live here and their vision of the future?<\/p>\n
The instinct would be to overlay the national atmosphere of bifurcation on the mayoral contest between Jamie Smith and Christine Erickson.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not accurate.<\/p>\n
Winning an election in Sioux Falls \u2013 probably any local election \u2013 requires balancing an array of constituencies on a much more direct level.<\/p>\n
Old Sioux Falls and newcomers.<\/p>\n
Wealth and the working class.<\/p>\n
Developers and consumers.<\/p>\n
Drivers and potholes.<\/p>\n
The issues are practical, immediate and driven by self-interest.<\/p>\n
Re: The aforementioned drivers and the potholes, which as we know is the top issue among Sioux Falls voters.<\/p>\n
Christine was able to collect two more chips than Jamie after the initial results were tallied on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
There will be a recount and we\u2019re all learning together how that will play out. The Sioux Falls City Council held a special meeting Friday morning to officially canvas the votes, a procedural step that will speed up the process by a few days at least.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s going to take weeks, at least, and Mayor Paul TenHaken said in a video posted Thursday that he\u2019s willing to serve as long as it takes to determine his successor.<\/p>\n
But still, he said, it\u2019s like telling his son at high school graduation next May that he has to keep going to school until September.<\/p>\n
Ugh.<\/p>\n
It all feels like an uncharted voyage.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s probably fitting in an election cycle that was new in several ways because the Legislature changed the calendar, mandating that local and state elections need to be held on the same day.<\/p>\n
How did we end up here?<\/p>\n
In the three weeks since the first round of voting on June 2 \u2013 which eliminated three of the five candidates \u2013 there were significant variables in play that didn\u2019t have obvious answers.<\/p>\n
Reminder, local races are non-partisan, but the specter of party was part of the discussion right up to the end.<\/p>\n
Christine had the most votes after June 2 \u2013 by a ways \u2013 37 percent to 28 percent.<\/p>\n
There were about 38,700 votes in the race.<\/p>\n
Christine received about 14,400 of those votes compared to 10,900 for Jamie.<\/p>\n
The winner of the first round of Sioux Falls polling isn\u2019t always the winner after the second. But in this case, Jamie had a lot of ground to make up.<\/p>\n
The next question was whether not having a statewide Republican contest on the ballot would make a difference.<\/p>\n
Judging by the results on Tuesday, it probably did.<\/p>\n
Christine\u2019s nine point margin became zero, with about 2,200 fewer votes cast.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s probably a better indicator about the state of the Sioux Falls electorate than the first round.<\/p>\n
As the pool of voters shrinks \u2013 as it often does in the runoff \u2013 the value of each voter increases, testing the strength of the candidates’ appeal to those constituencies and their ground game.<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s runoff is more representative of reality than the results of the first round.<\/p>\n
Voters in Sioux Falls are pretty consistent, the old constituencies remain the constituencies and on election day the winning candidate is usually the one who brings as many of those groups together as possible.<\/p>\n
Money makes a difference, but it\u2019s not the main thing.<\/p>\n
If it were, it would not have been this close. We won\u2019t know the final figures for a while but Christine raised more than double what Jamie did. Even taking out the high-profile $100,000 from a political action committee financed by big-time business interests, she still had more money.<\/p>\n
What was notable about the three-week runoff campaign was the degree to which \u2013 while political forces were in play \u2013 the candidates themselves didn\u2019t engage.<\/p>\n
It never became Republican versus Democrat, not in the debates and rhetoric, at least.<\/p>\n
And there were plenty of opportunities.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things that Christine and I did, and I\u2019m thankful for, is that we showed people we can disagree without being disagreeable,\u201d Jamie said in an interview with Sioux Falls Live on Wednesday. \u201cIn this political climate these days, there were things in this campaign that were done by others, but I don\u2019t think either of the candidates were the ones who were throwing pot shots at each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christine didn\u2019t do interviews on Wednesday but issued a statement.<\/p>\n
“Congratulations also to Jamie for a hard fought campaign. Sioux Falls has a bright future, and we will come together to make sure our community thrives today and for generations to come,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Christine always felt like the candidate of mainstream business interests.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not like Jamie is anti-business \u2013 he\u2019s a real estate agent after all \u2013 but it\u2019s likely he was unable to attract support from the business community writ large. Did they harbor doubts about his ultimate ability to maintain the city\u2019s growth which has fed the decades-long winning streak of growth and development that has fed their personal success?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s nothing wrong with success, of course, that\u2019s not the point and Jamie never insinuated there was.<\/p>\n
In Christine, there was more certainty and comfort that the status quo was the goal.<\/p>\n
It should also be noted that, from a purely tactical standpoint, Jamie left some opportunities to cast doubt on his opponent.<\/p>\n
He never made an issue of particular votes from her City Council days. (There\u2019s always vulnerabilities in votes.)<\/p>\n
He never made an issue of the $100,000 contribution to her campaign. (You don\u2019t have to be a class warrior to bring it up.)<\/p>\n
He never seriously challenged her executive experience. (Maybe bringing up running a Cub Scout troop wasn\u2019t enough.)<\/p>\n
He never made an issue of the MAGA wing of the Republican Party adhering to Christine\u2019s mojo. (She didn\u2019t ask for it, and didn\u2019t embrace it, but that doesn\u2019t mean it wasn\u2019t a campaign advantage if Jamie chose to use it. He did not.)<\/p>\n
For her part, Christine didn\u2019t invoke Jamie\u2019s role as the statewide Democrat standard bearer in 2022. (It would not have been difficult to find video of him firing off left-leaning talking points from a gubernatorial election.)<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t directly question his voting record in the Legislature. (Again, there\u2019s always fodder in a voting record when properly cast.)<\/p>\n
And she didn\u2019t point out his sometimes loose understanding of local policy minutia. (Instead, she frequently referenced her eight years on the City Council.)<\/p>\n
Those were, no doubt, conscious decisions born of an unwillingness to engage in what we politely refer to as \u201ccomparative campaigning.\u201d<\/p>\n
The danger being that you turn off more people than you attract.<\/p>\n
In many ways, this was a normal mayoral campaign in Sioux Falls. We just don\u2019t know who won yet.<\/p>\n
There does seem to be a shift, however, in the selection of three new councilors, all relative unknowns before the campaign.<\/p>\n
Sara Pankonin in the Southeast District is a civil engineer with virtually no public track record but is a bright and curious person with no particular dogma to press, judging by my initial conversations.<\/p>\n
She likely won because she worked really hard, constantly going door-to-door. Good old-fashioned Sioux Falls campaigning.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most remarkable development in the council races was that we now have two people who weren\u2019t even born in the United States.<\/p>\n
James Oppenheimer, who won an At-Large seat, is English, with the accent and all. He came into the race with a list of experiences in the local non-profit world, however, and breadth of support from the mainstream business community.<\/p>\n
He also worked the streets tirelessly. (James was certainly surprised to see me open the door in sweat pants and hoodie one Saturday morning.)<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s Zak Okuwe, who was born in Sudan.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s not fool ourselves into thinking that Zak\u2019s success \u2013 an African immigrant from a working-class family \u2013 would have been possible a decade or two ago.<\/p>\n
But our city has changed.<\/p>\n
Zak grew up in Sioux Falls.<\/p>\n
Was educated in Sioux Falls.<\/p>\n
Made a life in Sioux Falls as a nurse and advocate for STEM education in middle and high school students from underserved communities.<\/p>\n
Nobody who meets Zak isn\u2019t impressed by him, from the titans of business to the neighborhoods of the Central District where he won over voters.<\/p>\n
To me, Zak\u2019s success represents something we should all be proud of, that generations of Sioux Fallsians have built a city \u2013 from business to education to faith \u2013 where all people are welcome and if you put in the work you have a chance at a pretty good life.<\/p>\n
He is reflective of so many other refugees and immigrants and transplants, who have made this their home.<\/p>\n
That feels like a counterweight to the conversation, the politics, swirling around us.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve said it many times over the course of this election cycle, but it was a wonderful slate of candidates, people who brought a sincere commitment to public service to the arena.<\/p>\n
The candidates who came out on the wrong side of the vote counts on Tuesday should be proud as well. I know that Vince Danh, Mike Crane and Zach DeBoer will remain engaged and I thank them for that.<\/p>\n
I admit that sounds pollyannish at best, that it glosses over all the challenges and problems that do have as a city.<\/p>\n
One election doesn\u2019t solve transportation, homelessness or addiction.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t eliminate debates over spending on quality of life, or streets or public safety.<\/p>\n
It will be hard. People will make mistakes. There will be tough days.<\/p>\n
So, back to Austin Powers’ metaphysical question.<\/p>\n
I think it means that regardless of who becomes the next mayor, we\u2019re doing pretty good Sioux Falls. That we can bend and adapt to growth and change, that local government can meet the needs of the people in the moment and beyond.<\/p>\n
At least that\u2019s my hope.<\/p>\n
Best Little City in America, I say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In times like these it\u2019s instructive to rely on the insight of the great Austin Powers: \u201cWhat does…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129,99904,99905,99906,99907,99908,99909,99910,99911,99912],"class_list":["post-230964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-sioux-falls-culture","tag-sioux-falls-entertainment","tag-sioux-falls-government","tag-sioux-falls-history","tag-sioux-falls-planning","tag-sioux-falls-politics","tag-sioux-falls-recreation","tag-sioux-falls-transporation","tag-south-dakota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}