It's taken for granted that South Dakotans support our governor's notion that mask mandates are a bad thing--but city governments in the state did pass temporary mandates.
How did that work out for those city council members and mayors in recent municipal elections?
At the Mitchell Republic, Christiopher Vondrcek reports in Anti-mask candidates ran for council, mayor in 2 South Dakota cities that have imposed mask mandates — and lost:
Voters in Brookings and Yankton, S.D., this week went to the polls in municipal elections, in large part, to support incumbents who passed citywide mandates during the pandemic's height last fall. One mayor said the vote wasn't a referendum on masks, but he gauged wide, if quiet support for a mandate.
Last fall, they packed a city council meeting in Brookings, S.D., mask-less, adorned in red T-shirts sending a threatening message to officials posed to require masks indoors across the city, and their robust opposition shot around the nation in a video emblematic of the response to COVID-19 in South Dakota.
On Tuesday, April 13, some of those mask-opponents ran for city office.
And lost.
"I felt in my gut, even those loud voices did not represent the majority of our community," said Nick Wendell, a commission member, who voted for the city's facial-covering mandate and received 54% of ballots cast, the most of any candidate.
Tuesday was supposed to be a similar reckoning for an incumbent in Yankton, South Dakota -- one of the other, albeit few towns in the Rushmore state to pass a mask mandate.
Yard signs saying "vote 3 for liberty" dotted yards days before the election, with one candidate — a former mayor Curt Bernard — calling in a candidate interview for voters to cast ballots for him and two others to turn the city commission into a "pro-America, 1776, with more liberty kind of commission."
But instead, the town's current mayor, Nathan Johnson, as well as incumbent Bridget Benson, and candidate, Mike Villanueva, who spread the word of trusting doctors — even "epidemiologists" — prevailed easily.
"I don't know that the everyday voter saw this as a referendum for how the city handled the pandemic," said Johnson, who won over 67% of ballots cast. But, he added, "Based on the feedback we got when we passed the mask mandate, a large majority of the community agreed with that decision."
"A lot of people understood why we did what we did."
Up in Brookings, home to the state's largest university but also a manufacturing sector with Daktronics and 3M plants, Wendell, commissioner Patty Bacon, and mayoral candidate Oepke "Ope" Niemeyer beat challengers unified under a "Brighter Brookings" coalition spawned from an anti-mask coalition who showed up in droves of red T-shirts to last fall's meeting.
At the September meeting, chiropractor Isaiah Crevier stood up to say, "I think freedom is more important than money" adding at his own practice, "we will not be wearing a mask."
On Tuesday, Crevier came in fourth place, garnering 31% of ballots. It was the same for mayoral candidate Jeff Miller, who told the Brookings Register he was "never a big fan of" a mask ordinance. He earned 33% of the vote.
Campaigns are never about one topic, but Wendell notes the mask mandate "was the very first question" at a Chamber of Commerce-backed forum.
When he decided to run eight weeks ago, Wendell says he vowed not "to spend the next two months debating if masks worked." But he said his campaign war chest — usually $2,500 — grew three-fold, largely from unsolicited donations.
"It seemed like people in the community were sending a message," he said.
While South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem spurned mandates, Brookings, Yankton, Sioux Falls, Mitchell, and Huron all passed versions of a mask requirement locally, at the urging of health professionals. None carried penalties for violations. Only Brookings' mandate is still in place, where countywide COVID-19 mortality rates rank 6th-lowest in the state. . . .
Read the rest at the Mitchell Republic.
Risky business in South Dakota
In spurning a state-wide mask mandate, Noem had stressed the notion that South Dakota residents could make their own decisions about the risk of catching COVID, since we face all sort of risk all the time. Things like accidents, you know.
We're not sure how well South Dakotans were doing at that. In early January, we read in South Dakota News Now's Fatal crashes increased in South Dakota in 2020:
State officials say the number of fatal traffic accidents increased in South Dakota last year after hitting an all-time low in 2019.
Department of Public Safety spokesperson Tony Mangan tells Dakota Radio Group there were 126 fatality-related on South Dakota’s roads and highways in 2020, resulting in the deaths of 135 people.
In 2019, there were 88 fatal crashes that claimed 102 lives.
The number of people killed in motorcycle crashes last year was 27, compared with just 14 in 2019.
2020 saw the highest total crash fatalities in South Dakota since 2014 when officials reported 136 deaths. According to state data dating back to 1990, traffic fatalities peaked in 2003 with 203 deaths. Deaths have been trending downward since the mid-2000s. . . .
While South Dakota's vaccination rate is very high, KeloLand reports in The other half:
South Dakota is bragging about a milestone with the COVID-19 vaccination now that over half of the population has received at least one dose. But the majority of those who have begun the vaccination process are white and live in the more populated areas of the state. . . .
Much of that difference can be attributed to economic and racial inequity, the reportage reveals. And there's also this from South Dakota News Watch: ‘Vaccine hesitancy’ in South Dakota could prolong pandemic and delay a return to normal:
. . . South Dakota has been a national leader in providing coronavirus vaccines to older residents and others at high risk of complications from COVID-19.
But as the vaccine rollout expanded to Phase 2, making anyone 16 and older eligible for vaccination, the demand for shots has waned and concerns have risen that herd immunity may be unobtainable.
“It’s definitely concerning, and it’s truly a race against time,” said Dr. Shankar Kurra, vice president of medical affairs at Monument Health in Rapid City. “If we don’t get to that threshold of herd immunity, we could end up losing the race and having a new surge or wave of cases and unfortunately more hospitalizations and deaths.”
. . .National surveys and reports from medical experts in South Dakota reveal that vaccine hesitancy is more common among young people, rural and low-income residents, those with lower education levels and among some religious and political groups. Misinformation about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines is seen as a common reason people are deciding not to get vaccinated.
. . . A report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in early April showed estimated vaccine hesitancy rates for the nation, and indicated that hesitancy was greatest in the Great Plains and Southeast regions. In South Dakota, the estimates showed greater hesitancy in the middle third of the state compared with the east and west edges.
Our second shot of the Moderna vaccination kicks in tomorrow, and we're happy to help protect our family and community from the coronavirus.
And we're going to drive even more cautiously, given the risk assessments other drivers are taking.
Related posts:
- After three months of wearing positive pants, how are South Dakotans doing in the pandemic?
- South Dakota Governor Noem helps drain the swamp by bringing the alligators to Pierre
- Noem's office remains in mask denial, despite pleas from doctors, indigenous lawmakers
- Positive Pants: South DaCOVID Governor Kristi Noem garners the best national headlines
- VIDEO: Stop the Spread SD's South Dakota COVID-19 Memorial Display
Photo: "Political signs dot a lawn on April 2, 2021 in Yankton, South Dakota advertising three candidates who expressed frustration with the citywide mask ordinance passed in December." (Submitted photo from the Mitchell Republic).
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