Interesting Primary Results, Indeed

Absentee ballots were counted and voters headed to the polls on Tuesday, June 3, for the primaries. Two major local races were decided on who would continue onto the main vote in November. The unofficial results came in just before midnight.

Six justice of peace candidates appeared on the ballot: Christine Gamas, Dave Gorton, Christina Hillman, Ronald Kulczyk, David McLean and Mary Strand. Gorton and Hillman will move onto the final vote in November, Gorton taking the majority of votes at 806, and Hillman coming in close with Gamas with 451 votes over 437. Kulczyk took 164 votes, Strand took 124 and McLean took 120.

Another race in the primary for county voters was decided for the county commissioner, District 1 position. Dan Carr, Russell Dahl and Paul Tweten faced each other for Dave Pippin's position at the primary. Tweten will move on with the majority of votes, 1,021, and Dahl will also move onto the vote in November with 560 votes. Carr trailed close behind with 523 votes.

Issues on the local ballot had voters showing whether or not they supported a levy for an additional 2 mills per year for the Glasgow City-County Library. The count had 1,194 voters in support, with 873 against the additional levy. The levy will raise approximately $51,784 for the fiscal years 2015-16 through 2019-20 for construction, maintenance and improvements. The impact will be close to $5 per $100,000 of taxable market value of a home.

Voters also said no to an additional 10 mill levy for roadwork, raising around $222,740 for the next 10 fiscal years, beginning in 2014-15. The levy would have raised funds for construction, maintenance and improvements to public highways. The impact would have been around $25 for a home valued at $100,000. The voters came in close with 508 against the levy, and 483 in support.

A majority of votes also decided against a review of the government that would fund up to $10,000 to examine and submit recommendations on how the local government operates. Valley County voted 1,272 against, 751 for. Glasgow voted 518 against, 405 for. Fort Peck voted 65 against, 21 for. Nashua voted 66 against, 32 for and Opheim voted 14 against and nine for.

On a non-partisan state scale, voters prefered Jim Rice over W. David Herbert for supreme court justice, Justice 1, with 1,412 to 341 votes, and Mike Wheat over Lawrence Vandyke for Justice 2, 990 to 517 votes.

Republicans will not see anyone on the ticket for state representative this year in District 31, but Democrats chose Bridget Smith over Bill Whitehead with the vote at 89 to 40.

District 33 chose between Mike Lang-R and Floyd Hopstad-D, with more votes supporting Lang, 481 to 261. Those in District 34 chose between Gene Hartsock-D and Austin Knudsen-R, with 453 votes in support of Knudsen and 183 supporting Hartsock.

On the Democratic ballot, voters chose John Walsh over Dirk Adams and John Bohlinger for the U.S. Senate, with the majority of voters in Valley County approving of Walsh. The votes here were 422-Walsh, 212-Bohlinger and 64-Adams.

U.S. Representative hopeful John Lewis took a victory over John Driscoll. Local voters supported Driscoll with 314 votes, and Lewis trailed with 299 votes.

Republicans chose Steve Daines over Susan Cundiff and Champ Edmunds for U.S. Senate. Local voters chose Daines by a landslide, with 1,143 votes, Cundiff followed with 122 and Edmunds had 76. The GOP has five choices for U.S. Representative: Elsie Arntzen, Matt Rosendale, Corey Stapleton, Drew Turanio and Ryan Zinke. Stapleton took most of the support in Valley County, with 520 votes. The rest came in with Rosendale-333, Zinke-291, Arnitzen-118 and Turiano-22.