Paul Wildman will represent District 5 on the Pope County Board of Commissioners defeating Bruce Harvey, 650 votes to Harvey’s 474 votes, according to the unofficial Pope County results from last Tuesday’s general election. 

Wildman and Harvey were vying for the board seat vacated by Cody Rogahn, who was defeated in a three-way race in the primary election.  District 5 includes  a portion of the City of Glenwood, City of Long Beach, Reno, Leven and Westport Townships and the City of Villard.

Paul Gremmels, who ran unopposed for the Pope County Commissioner seat in District 1, was elected with 98.56% of the vote, receiving 956 votes; and incumbent Larry Lindor, also running unopposed for the District 4 Pope County Commissioner seat, was elected with 98.39% of the vote with 917 votes. Gremmels was running for the seat vacated by Nan Haggerty, who decided not to run for reelection.

Minnewaska Area School board results

The other local race was for four seats on the Minnewaska Area School Board. There were six candidates vying for three, four-year terms on the school board.  The three elected with the most votes were incumbent Ted Reichmann with 2,731 votes, Amanda Ogdahl with 2,312 votes, and Incumbent Zach Lagred with 1,961 votes.  Other candidate vote totals included: Mariah Cassidy with 1,675 votes, Will Harvey with 1,487 votes and Randall Sander with 722 votes.

In the special election for the two-year term on the Minnewaska School Board, Justin Zavadil defeated Lisa Martin with Zavadil receiving 2,951 votes and Martin receiving 1,324 votes.

Other county results

In most other races in the county and county’s cities, incumbents or candidates were running unopposed.

In Glenwood, unopposed incumbent Mayor Sherri Kazda was reelected and incumbent City Commissioner Neil Haynes was reelected.  Brent Cochran, who was running unopposed for Donna Martin’s seat on the city commission was also elected.

In Starbuck all races were also unopposed with incumbent Mayor Gary Swenson reelected and city council members Dane Christensen and Christopher Taffe both reelected.

In Long Beach, voters returned incumbent Mayor Mike Pfeiffer to office and Bill Mills was reelected to the city council.  No one filed for the second council seat in Long Beach, but there were 61 write-in votes but it was not possible to report who received write-in votes when this issue of the Tribune & Times was published.

No one filed for the Mayor position in Lowry,  but Virgil Coziahr was elected to the city council in Lowry.

Jeff Finke and Heidi Logeais were elected to council seats in Cyrus and Tyler Berg was elected mayor of Cyrus.  

Jason Rupp ran unopposed and was elected Mayor of Villard and Dean Chlian was elected to one open city council seat in Villard.  No one filed for the other seat, but there were 37 write-in votes.

Keith Kirchhevel was elected Mayor of Sedan and Ryan Steinhofer was elected to Sedan city council.

Hospital District

In the only race in the local Hospital District was for a member at large position and Dennis Martinson defeated Mark Thompson for that position.  Martinson received 1,551 votes and Thompson received 1,352 votes.  Other hospital board members elected included Ann Engen (Gilchrist), June (Neumann Wheeler (Grove Lake), Marlyn Perry (Leven) and Ivan Fossen (Reno).  

Rep. Paul Anderson, Sen. Torrey Westrom win easily in county, legislative districts

Incumbent Rep. Paul Anderson (R) was a decisive winner in District 12A, defeating DFL challenger Edi Barrett 3,470 votes in Pope County to Barrett’s 1,356  county votes.  Anderson was declared the overall winner in the district with 13,281 votes  or 70.1% and will serve District 12A as its state representative.

Incumbent State Sen. Torrey Westrom was also a big winner in Pope County and overall in Senate District 12 defeating DFL challenger Kari Dorry and Ashley Klingbeil in a three-way race for that state senate seat. Westrom garnered 66.04% of the Pope County vote. Westrom garnered 26,179 votes in District 12 or 68.1% of the vote.

How Pope  County voted in Nov. 8 election

The unofficial vote totals for candidates in Pope County