Last updated on 2018-06-06
Sheriff Brad Howell has dozens of county employees backing him with this independent communication in the Watertown Public Opinion:
Codington County auditor Cindy Brugman will have a hard time voting for Howell in the Republican primary: the voter registration database shows Brugman is a registered Democrat. Unless Brugman was registered Republican at some point in the last five weeks, cast an early ballot for Howell, and then re-registered with the better party, Brugman is among the 47,573 registered voters across South Dakota disenfranchised from their local sheriff’s races by our partisan primary laws.
Auditor Brugman will want to double check the registrations of deputy treasurer Janet Bevers, treasurer’s clerk Betty Overlie, and jailer Erin Winge if they come in to vote in the Republican primary; right now, Bevers, Overlie, and Winge are registered Democrats.
Sheriff Howell can only hope Jordan Mason doesn’t pick up on these names and blanket Codington County with postcards blasting Howell as being endorsed by Codington County’s liberals.
Codington County drug court jail liaison Shawna Carter and equalization officer Melissa Sears may have trouble voting for Howell: I checked all six Codington County ZIP codes and couldn’t find either Shawna Carter or Melissa Sears registered to vote in Codington County. But hey, maybe there’s just some maiden-name mix-up in the voter registration files.
Most of the Codington County employees I checked are registered Republicans and thus at the moment eligible to vote to re-up Howell as sheriff. But Sheriff Howell’s influence over his fellow courthouse denizens appears to be so strong that he can compel even county employees who cannot legally vote for him to tell the public that they will vote for him.
It doesn’t actually say that the named employees will be voting for him on June 5!
They could probably run this by a composition teacher who would ask why “county employees” is capitalized.
For those Codington County employees who will not be allowed to vote a Republican ballot, myself included, this advertisement is a show of support for Codington County Sheriff, Brad Howell. Rest assured that every person who casts a ballot, early or at the polls on election day, will receive only the ballot they are permitted to vote by South Dakota law.
True, Bob… but beyond the “show of support” Auditor Brugman says she’s showing, the ad says “these county employees” are “voting” for Howell. The language is sloppy and inaccurate… hopefully not a reflection of law enforcement in Codington County.
Agents of government banding together to consolidate their own power, reinvesting their taxpayer-funded salaries to promote cronyism and corruption.
If I were a Codington County Republican, this ad would make me much less likely to vote for Brad Howell and somewhat less likely to vote for the other county employees listed. Debbie Melville should explain why the ad excludes the private sector, and Howell should disavow it.
An aside: “some maiden-name mix-up”
The anachronistic words irk me and it’s one of the many examples of why the best choice for marrying couples is some type of combination of names or a wholly new family name.
Just say’n.
What’s the modern replacement, Debbo? Pre-marriage name?
Kurt, I do wonder about the wisdom of having public employees using their public status to add weight to an endorsement of a candidate for public office. Daugaard is doing it for Dusty Johnson. From a purely tactical perspective, I guess the move assumes that the people who are suspicious of or dissatisfied with the current government are outnumbered by the people who feel their current public officials are serving them well.
I’m sure its not the case, but it looks like the employees needed to endorse the sheriff to keep their jobs…. this kind of thing is forbidden for City Employees and could be cause for termination.
Cory writes:
It’s most troubling when that office has direct authority over the government employees making the endorsement, which nearly always applies to an office in law enforcement.
Good observation, Cory. In my view there’s more than a little naïveté in many Americans’ attitudes toward law enforcement and government officials in general. Even in cases where those officials are serving us well, we should try to keep it that way by remaining suspicious of the natural human tendency toward selfish behavior.
The county employees endorsing Howell include a lot of deputies. I don’t want to take deputies’ First Amendment rights away, but we should all view endorsements from people whose paycheck hinges on the endorsee’s ongoing approval of their job performance with some skepticism.
Yes, and we should also ask ourselves whether a “player’s coach” actually produces a better team. When agents of government are allowed to select their own leaders, they eventually become less efficient and much less accountable to the people they’re supposed to be serving. That applies to the governor, the county sheriff, and the director of the CIA.
I am amazed they did not include the words for vote early vote often for Howell