Provo’s primary election was held yesterday for both mayor and a couple of councilors.

As for one of those two councilors, voters overwhelmingly favored incumbent Dave Sewell (with about 2,635 votes), who represents a tragic continuation of present trends toward greater central economic planning, such as higher taxes, deeper debts, increased spending, multiplied ordinances, disrespected rights, et cetera, as detailed on our Free Provo website.  Sewell will likely face young challenger Wesley Marriott (with about 824 votes) in this year’s general election, although vote tallies are still being finalized.  We’d love to say honestly that Marriott has proven himself a champion of rightful liberty but, since he hasn’t done so, we won’t be endorsing either candidate in this citywide council race this year.

As for mayor, ten candidates registered by June 7th, nine progressed into this year’s primary election on August 15th (yesterday), and two are now scheduled to face each other in this year’s general election on November 7th, and those two appear to be Michelle Kaufusi (with about 1688 votes) and Odell Miner (with about 1234 votes).  Sadly, neither strike us as valiant rights-defenders, although both seem highly competent.  Kaufusi was first to enter this year’s Provo mayoral campaign, at the invitation of Provo’s political/economic elites, and (like Sewell) represents a continuation of present statist trends mentioned above.  Miner served as a Provo city commissioner from 1974 to 1978; he doesn’t show blatant interest in either continuing or reversing recent trends toward centralized command-and-control, but he does want to manage well what we already have.  We consider him the better option of these two, although we don’t believe that he’s demonstrated sufficient reason to merit our endorsement.

Our only endorsement in this election was Howard Stone, whom we believe proved himself (despite whatever flaws he may have) to be a principled defender of human rights.  Stone placed fifth (with about 108 votes) of these nine mayoral candidates after Kaufusi, Miner, Everett, and Walters.

Altogether, Provo has over 117,000 residents (estimated), of whom 41,805 (36% of residents) are registered to vote, of whom 5,243 (13% of registered voters) actually bothered to vote yesterday, which is an unusually high percentage for off-year elections in Provo, but an unusually low percentage for what it should be.  Of yesterday’s voters, 1,688 (32%) voted for Kaufusi while 1,234 (24%) voted for Miner, which means that both Kaufusi and Miner won this election with the support of only about 3-4% of registered voters each, or 1-2% of Provo residents each, which are also appallingly low percentages.  An additional 2% of Provoans could have easily redistributed victory upon an entirely different candidate like Stone, which is why we tried hard to encourage liberty-lovin’ Provoans to vote yesterday, both directly and indirectly, although it appears that we succeeded far less than we’d hoped.

In any case, we haven’t given up, but will simply accept our losses, strive to proclaim freedom as best as we can during these next 85 days before this year’s general election, and strive to do better in 2019.  We’ll also continue to welcome any suggestions and donations and volunteers.  Thank you for your support, and here’s to a freer future for our thriving city!

References:

• Vote Provo: Candidate Information
• Provo Daily Herald: “Michelle Kaufusi announces candidacy for Provo mayor” (2016 Nov 03)
• Provo Daily Herald: “Michelle Kaufusi explains her Provo mayoral candidacy on new ‘What Say Ye?’” (2017 May 22)
• Provo Daily Herald: “Michelle Kaufusi is not an athlete but says she will stand strong for Provo” (2017 Jun 25)
• Provo Daily Herald: “2017 Candidate Guide: Michelle Kaufusi” (2017 Jul 26)
• Provo Daily Herald: “Guest opinion: Dedicated to keeping Provo strong” (2017 Aug 04)
• Provo Daily Herald: “Michelle Kaufusi takes leads in primary’s preliminary results for Provo mayor” (2017 Aug 15)
• Michelle Kaufusi for Provo Mayor
• Provo Daily Herald: “Mayoral candidate Odell Miner builds campaign on leading, listening and responding” (2017 Jun 25)
• Provo Daily Herald: “2017 Candidate Guide: Odell Miner” (2017 Jul 26)
• Odell Miner for Mayor
• Provo: Election Results
• Free Provo
• Facebook: Free Provo
• PayPal: David Edward Garber