Candidate info

As you know, we have just a couple of contentious local races taking place this year. In the spirit of education and enlightenment (and because so many people have asked) here is a list of information for the City Hall and School Board Candidates. If the candidate has a website, I will have it linked in his/her name, if there is no website, I will note that.

For the City Council races, there are two three year seats up and one two year seat.

Running for the three year seats are:

Ken Hedberg - Ken was appointed to take Cheri Dornbush's seat 8 months ago when she moved out of Prior Lake earlier this year. Steve Millar (no website available) is the other incumbent running for re-election. Challenging Steve and Ken are Jeff Evens (no website available), Randy Langhorst and Vaughn Lemke (no website available)

Chad LeMair (no website available) is running as the incumbent for the 2 year seat. Richard Keeney and George Victor (no website available) are his challengers.

On the School board side we have incumbents Eric Pratt, Diane Ziemann and Dick Booth. The challengers are John Myser, Dee Dee Francis, Chris Lind, Greg Bores and Mike Von Arx. At this time, none of the school board candidates have websites, but you can read about their stand on some of the issues facing the school district here and here.

Lastly on the ballot are a levy referendum and a bonding referendum. If the levy referendum does not pass, the bonding referendum automatically does not pass. The organization supporting the referendums is the "Stand By Me" Committee and the organization opposed to the referendums is the "Citizens for Accountable Government".

There will be a meet the candidates forum for the City Council races on Tuesday, October 16, from 6 to 8 pm. The forum will be a chance for residents to meet the candidates, hear about some of their core platform issues and ask questions of them. If you can not make it to the forum, PLTV-15 will run the forum daily all the way up to the election on November 6.

For the candidates that do not have webpages I would ask citizens to take a few moments and drop the candidates a polite letter asking them how they stand on the issues that concern you the most. I am sure that every single one of them would love to open the dialog.

Stay tuned to these pages for further candidate forum information as it becomes available and for a post on my humble impressions on the candidates that are running.