City Council Incumbents Lose, School Board Incumbents Win; Fall River Uranium Mining Ban Close With 3 Precincts To Go

    All the votes in Dawes County have been tabulated and there will be 2 new members on the Chadron City Council beginning in December. 

     In the race for a trio of 4-year terms, the winners are challenger Mark Graves with 927, followed by incumbent George Klein at 831 and Shane Shepherd, another non-incumbent, with 766. 

     Incumbent Cheryl Welch came close but couldn’t catch Shepherd, finishing with 731. Rounding out the field were newcomer Jason Dye at 549, and incumbent and current Mayor Mark Werner with 543. The order 1-6 is exactly the same as in the primary.

      Miles Bannan is the only candidate on the ballot for a 2-year term on the council and won with 1,063. There were 125 write-ins in the race.

       Both incumbents for the Crawford City Council were also defeated. Joining the council will be Shane Norman with 314 and APril Grant with 265. Incumbents Ronnie Thompson and Ed Kuhnel received 94 and 72 votes, respectively.

       Mayor Connie Shell, who withstood a recall campaign, failed in her reelection bid, losing to Tom Phillips 214-175,

     The 3  incumbent members of  the Chadron School Board with expiring terms all won reelection. Tom Menke drew 1,354 with Sandy Montague-Roes getting 1,324 and 

Tye Pourier at 1,173.

       Courtney Terrell also topped the thousand vote mark, but was 31 votes shy of catching Pourier with 1,042. Rounding out the field were Colby McCoy with 829, and Kevin Oleksy with 513.

      The two Crawford school board incumbents were winners but the top vote-getter was a newcomer. Erin Norman tallied 526, followed by J-R Wasserburger with 435 and Joe Vogel with 432. Trailing was Christine Kuhnel Swanson with 240. 

      In Fall River County, 6 of the 9 precincts have been counted so far and an initiated measure to ban uranium mining in the county has a slight lead with 866 YES or 51% to 829 or 41%.

ORIGINAL STORY

   The first run of results for Dawes County are in – precincts 1-4, all in the city of Chadron. There are 11 precincts in the county.

     In the race for a trio of 4-year terms on the Chadron City Council, challenger Mark Graves leads with 747, followed by incumbent George Klein at 678 and a second challenger, Shane Shepherd with 627. 

     Then it’s incumbent Cheryl Welch with 585, newcomer Jason Dye at 448, and incumbent and current Mayor Mark Werner with 440. 

      Miles Bannan is the only candidate on the ballot for a 2-year term on the council and he has 875, but there have 103 write-ins counted so far.

     With precincts 1-4 counted, the 3 incumbents hold down the top 3 spots in the Chadron School Board election. Sandy Montague-Roes has 753, Tom Menke 738, and Tye Pourier 673.

       After that, it’s Courtney Terrell with 559, Colby McCoy 447, and Kevin Oleksy 327. The top 3 will be elected.

     The next run of ballots may include some of the Crawford precincts.

    Statewide, the only race called so far is 3rd District Republican Congressman Adrian Smith. In South Dakota, Republican U-S Senator John Thune has been declared as winning a 4th term with GOP Congressman Dusty Johnson claiming his 3rd term.

      In Fall River County, 3 of the 9 precincts have been tallied so far and an initiated measure to ban uranium mining in the county is trailing 469 votes or 57% NO to 355 or 43%.