The Morning After - Disappointment - And Thank You

Well, the voters spoke yesterday, and despite our best efforts to come away with victory, we came up short - really short.  I finished in 7th place out of 8 candidates:

Unofficial Final Results from Andover:

2010 General Election Results
10 of 10 precincts counted

DON JACOBSON - 4293  *
TONY HOWARD - 2319
BRIAN HAUGEN - 2372
JEFF SHOEMAKER - 2315
ERIC KOHNKE - 746
JULIE TRUDE - 5477  *
SHANNEN SCHMIEG - 1429
WES VOLKENANT - 1400
WRITE-IN - 88

So, first the most humongous thank you of all has to go to Cheryl, who isn't into politics, but threw herself into this with all the energy she could muster, and provided the creative spark needed to try lots of different ways to get our message out there.  I'm posting two pictures of her "Vote Volkenant" pumpkin from Sunday below.  And Cheryl came up with the great idea of taping our literature into the newspaper boxes and on the mailbox posts on most of Andover.  I don't know if we will miss the driving around the entirety of Andover, but we had a great time doing it.

For those friends, family members, neighbors - and complete strangers - who did cast your votes for me - thank you!  Thank you very much!  It was very humbling to realize that people were casting votes for me, and putting their trust and faith in me. 

Obviously not as many people did trust my leadership, as I would have liked, but it simply means that I'm not the type of individual that voters in Andover are looking to for city leadership.  I'm a county employee, a union person.  It was pretty easy to discern that I'm a Democrat.  I favor government and solutions that call for the city to provide services to the people.

I congratulate Julie Trude and Don Jacobson on their re-election to the City Council.  I hope you both have a successful four years of city stewardship ahead.  And congratulations to Mayor Mike Gamache on his re-election, winning with about 80% of the vote.

Best wishes to my other opponents, Brian, Tony, Jeff, Shannen and Eric - I hope each of you is taking away something from the whole experience this morning, as I am.  Most of you fared better than I in this election.  The voters in Andover resonated with fiscally conservative messages that most of you preached - smaller government, lower taxes, etc.  

I found that message deeply troubling and concerning, but I'm in a minority in this regard.  And clearly last night, as the statewide results rolled in, and Anoka County voters sent many DFLers down to defeat, and statewide the Legislature went Republican, it's apparent that a lot of voters have a very different idea of what direction we should be going in as a state.  I'm sad and disappointed today - and worried for my state and country.  Too many wrong-headed people were elected yesterday.  I was disappointed for myself last night, and would have liked to have run better in the city election, but whether or not Mark Dayton is Governor the next four years, there is going to be a stronger anti-government, anti-social services, anti-tax revenue mood in charge for at least the next two years.  Government by stalemate - in St. Paul and in Washington - is a very real possibility.

Once again, I had the pleasure of meeting many of you, of getting to know my city much better, and I thank all of you who came here for participating in this process with Cheryl and I.