An Editorial by Dave Baumeister
We are going to give you four numbers: 54, 36, 26 and 18.
As you will probably ask, “What do these mean?” We’ll tell you.
54 was the number of years of experience there was at the end of 2022. However, that year, Commissioners Jeff Barth and Cindy Heiberger chose not to run again, so the commission lost 28 years of experience.
36 is the number of years of experience the commission will have at the end of 2024. But after this year, Commissioner Jean Bender will be stepping down, taking another 10 years of experience away from the county board.
26 will be the number of years of experience on the commission on Jan. 7. 2025, if, and only if, Commissioner Dean Karsky is re-elected for a third term.
And the very low number of 18 will be the number of years of experience on the Minnehaha County Commission should Karsky NOT be re-elected on June 4, and 14 of those 18 years will be coming from only ONE commissioner, Gerald Beninga.
This week in our paper, we have questionnaires answered by all four candidates in that June Republican primary. And since there are no independents or candidates from any other political parties running, the two elected next month will be the new county commissioners sworn in next January.
Therefore, if you care about Minnehaha County, we emphatically urge you to go to the polls and cast at least one of your votes for Karsky.
We think if you read the answers provided by the candidates, his experience is going to shine out like a neon billboard in New York’s Time Square. That is experience Minnehaha County cannot afford to lose.
While we are not endorsing any other candidates, we also feel that when you read all of the answers to our questions, you should be able to successfully make up your own minds about who the best of those three is to serve our county citizens, and we expect choices there will vary.
Watch out, though, for one-issue candidates. We specifically asked about the county’s election process, as we wanted to know where candidates stood on the issue.
First of all, we were never talking about problem election issues that may or may not have happened around the country, we were laser-focused on Minnehaha County, as our question made clear.
So it does seem odd that anyone would want to spend the money to run for an elected office in a system that they say is rigged.
Could it be that what they say and what they believe are two different things?
As to the “proof” which one candidate is looking for, we see empirical evidence. People from our newspaper have been following elections in Minnehaha County for over a half of a century, and we don’t remember candidates ever complaining about the voting process being rigged against them.
And if the “proof in the pudding is in the eating,” as the original expression says, we have to believe that the proof of election integrity is in the elected candidates.
Sure, there have been close elections with recounts. And there have been elections where some balloting problems happened, but those do not amount to a lack of integrity.
But, again, we strongly endorse Commissioner Dean Karsky for re-election, and because so many people will be kept out of this voting cycle, we also suggest the roughly 50% of registered county voters who are not Republicans change their party affiliation to the GOP before the May 20 deadline to be able to vote in the June 4 election.
