Tag Archives: Provo

Provo’s Primary Election Results for 2017

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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!

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Primary Election Day 2017 in Three Days!

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This is our final weekend before Utah’s primary elections on Tuesday!

So, if you haven’t already started to scrutinize this year’s candidates, to identify the most virtuous wise champion of rightful liberty under Constitutional law, to actively support that candidate among your friends and neighbors, and to plan to turn them out to vote, then this is about your last good opportunity. In fact, today is a lovely summer Saturday to go knock on your neighbors’ doors, especially since many Provoans will be busy with religious pursuits tomorrow, work Monday morning and afternoon, and family Monday evening. So, please don’t miss this vital opportunity!  Our website’s Solutions section presents more information about such precinct-level activism.

As mentioned before, it’s our opinion that most of our city’s candidates this year may show great personal virtue but lack sufficient political wisdom. A few candidates seem to want to continue our city’s present trends toward ever-greater centralized command-and-control via higher taxes, deeper debts, increased spending, multiplied ordinances, violated rights, regulated businesses, et cetera—and this is unacceptable.  Some other candidates seem to feel perfectly alright with our city’s present degree of control over us, but simply want to manage its intrusiveness better—and this is inadequate.  Only two candidates clearly represent a different direction for our city, one toward total anarchy (which we believe constitutes an overreaction to tyranny) and another toward rightful liberty.  And this is why the latter candidate, who is Howard Stone, has our endorsement this year.  So, please consider voting for Howard this year, and helping your persuadable neighbors to do likewise.

We’ll be running some limited social-media ads over these next 72 hours (except Sunday) advertising our website, Howard’s website, and Tuesday’s state primary elections, which we would have started sooner except for periodically running short of funds.  Donations remain welcome.  And, with hundreds more dollars, we can even create Free Provo yard signs to attract additional Provoans to our website.

Hopefully, these references below may help during these crucial final three days…

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Primary Election Day 2017 in Two Weeks!

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August has barely started, which means only two short weeks until this year’s primary elections.  If you haven’t already started to scrutinize this year’s candidates, to identify the one who will best uphold all that’s best in America’s exemplary political heritage of rightful liberty under Constitutional law, to actively support that candidate among your friends and neighbors, and to plan to turn them out to vote, then there’s no time like the present to start.  Hopefully, our website will help, but not unless YOU take action.  Please don’t wait.  Also, donations remain welcome.

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Provo’s Mayoral Candidates for 2017 (Part 2 of 2)

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Provo requires all residents seeking city office to register their candidacy between June 1st and June 7th, and so (as we post this blog entry) it’s been clear for 20 days now what this year’s electoral options will be for us Provoans.

Provoans campaigning in 2017 for mayor (now that John Curtis is retiring after two terms) include an unusually-large group of nine.  The initial four to enter this year’s mayoral race were featured in a previous blog entry, of whom one (Stephen Cope) has since withdrawn.  The latter six are as follows:

  1. Edwin Odell Miner, who served as a Provo city commissioner during the 1970s before Provo adopted its current mayor-council system during 1982.  He hasn’t yet shown much interest in significantly changing Provo’s current status quo (which, as Ronald Reagan once quipped, is Latin for “the mess we’re in”),
  2. Larry Walters, who is a passionate public servant/manager who wants to balance Provo’s budget while renewing its infrastructure, and who seems poised to highly-competently maintain Provo’s present status quo—except that we need a principled champion of rightful liberty instead.
  3. Kevin Wing, who believes in wielding political power beyond simply defending rights to actively foster both prosperity and happiness, and who wants to expand Provo’s current array of city-run businesses to include both an events center and a veterans’ center—which are all fine goals but NOT for political systems.
  4. Elliot Craig, whose views are not widely known yet.
  5. John Fenley, who is an intelligent futurist whose views go beyond libertarianism into anarchism, which is why he is interested in completely disincorporating Provo. We at Free Provo view anarchy as an unwise overreaction to tyranny, and instead prefer rightful liberty under Constitutional law, and perhaps also a revised city charter for Provo.
  6. Howard Stone, a humble-but-tenacious serial candidate who isn’t especially interested in ruling over others, but expresses relatively libertarian / Constitutional views instead.  We presently believe that, despite any arguable inadequacies that he may possess, he’s the best choice overall for Provo—and, as such, we endorse him in this election.

Whether you agree with our assessment of these 9 candidates or not, we nevertheless urge you to identify the best champion of rightful liberty under Constitutional law who runs among them, and then to uphold that candidate as best as possible for as long as he/she remains in this race, including by activating like-minded neighbors.

If we liberty-lovin’ Provoans can build our ranks to become at least as numerous and/or effective as our statist adversaries, then we can help a rights-defending champion to achieve electoral victory, both in Provo’s primary election this August 15th and in Provo’s general election this November 7th.  Which is one reason why Facebook ads began inviting Provoans to this website yesterday, and will continue to do so for the next 7 weeks.  So, what are you waiting for?  Let’s get to work…

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Provo’s Mayoral Candidates for 2017 (Part 1 of 2)

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Provo requires all residents seeking city office to register their candidacy between June 1st and June 7th, and so (as we post this blog entry) it’s been clear for 10 days now what this year’s electoral options will be for us Provoans.

Provoans campaigning in 2017 for mayor (now that John Curtis is retiring after two terms) include an unusually-large group of ten.  The first four to enter this year’s mayoral race were, in order:

  1. Michelle Kaufusi, who has told the Provo Daily Herald that she was asked to seek office by some of Provo’s political/economic elites.  She seems to be an experienced central planner who proposes to exert political control over our economy such that our economy grants west Provoans a grocery store.
  2. Sherrie Hall Everett, who is another seemingly skilled central planner who was highly involved in developing Provo’s Vision 2030 central planning guidelines, and says that she wants to encourage more Provoans to involve themselves in Provo’s central-planning process.
  3. Stephen Cope, who is a young artist with “liberal” political views who considers himself neither male nor female, but something in between.
  4. Eric Speckhard, who wants more honest open inclusive cooperative government that will continue some (if not all) of Provo’s current central-planning policies like subsidizing businesses, incentivizing shoppers, and dictating land usage.

It’s arguable that both Sherrie and Michelle are this year’s two Establishment favorites, intended to survive Provo’s mid-August primary election (which will eliminate all but two candidates for each office) and then face each other in November.  Whether that’s true or not, none of these four initial candidates seem to be principled champions of rightful liberty under Constitutional law and, as such, none have earned our support.

We solicited additional candidates for 2017 through Facebook advertising that reached over 2,000 Provoans with libertarian and/or Constitutional interests in late May.  Perhaps partly in response to those efforts, six more Provoans registered to campaign for mayor at the figurative last minute in early June.  We will feature those final six in a subsequent blog entry.

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