Now that I’m back in town and have had a few minutes to look at the election results, I have a few thoughts on the local races. Here are the Washington County Results.
First, turnout in Washington County was impressive for an April election. Some races on the ballot pulled in 42% turnout and the county average was about almost 37%. Not bad.
Second, congratulations to Chris Zwygart and Kurt Rebholz who won convincing victories for seats on the West Bend School Board with 38.45% turnout. And thank you to Monte Schmiege for his service to the community. As I said in my column, I think that the four candidates are pretty conservative and would find agreement on probably 90%+ of issues. I have a high degree of confidence that they will be solid stewards of the school district. It is curious how different the results were with the same four candidates in the primary election. Clearly, a lot of work happened between the primary and the general election.
Third, I am flabbergasted that the City of West Bend voters voted FOR a tax increase to fund spending increases for transportation. Granted, it was for the cheapest option and it only won by 110 votes, but that’s shocking in this community. They also voted to encourage the county to share sales tax revenues with local communities. That makes more sense.
I’m going to admit that I didn’t really have any time to figure out the the aldermanic or county supervisor races. I did find it curious that the two incumbents for the Kewaskum School Board won reelection. That district just passed a big school referendum, so it appears that the voters up there are still pretty satisfied with that.
Overall, the Blue Wave we saw at the state level clearly had an impact locally too. Given the results, I would expect every local unit of government that wants more money to get a referendum on the November ballot to capitalize on the wave.
MAJOR FAIL……any thoughts Paul or Owen????
West Bend School Board Primary Results
These are interesting results:
First, who are the 505 idiots who voted for Carl Lundin? He’s the guy who dropped out. We’ll call that the “ignorant voter” quotient.
Second, the two candidates who identify themselves as Conservatives, Mary Weigand and Monte Schmiege, won convincing pluralities. Schmiege is an incumbent and one of two conservatives on the current board. Weigand is a well-known local conservative. This is, perhaps, not surprising in a conservative community like West Bend, but the results of the past few local elections seemed to indicate a softening of that demographic feature. This election seems to indicate that perhaps the previous elections were anomalies.
Third, turnout for this primary election was 35% higher than the general election last year for school board (22.53% vs. 16.68%). This is a pattern that we have seen in West Bend for a while. There is a vocal, committed, organized liberal minority. They vote more reliably than the conservative majority. This means that turnout is everything. When turnout is below 20%, liberals can win victories in local elections like they did last April. When turnout is higher, there just aren’t enough liberals to overcome the conservative vote. The liberals can turn out every single liberal in the county and they can’t win if there is even a moderate conservative turnout. It’s just math.
Let’s hope that turnout is decent for the April election. Given that the Supreme Court race is likely to be very heated, I think Schmiege and Weigand have the inside track to the school board. That bodes well for the district.
I think sharing of sales tax revenue for road aide with local municipalities is starting to make some waves.
Not happening Kevin. The county will be facing a huge deficit by 2020, they have no money without the sales tax. If you talk to our current county exec he will tell you it’s the county’s cocaine, they are addicted and can’t go back.
If the County Exec ever told the truth, his hair would catch fire.