Date: 8/29/2010
Political pundit and provocateur "Gangsta Hanksta" has it ALL figured out! Just ask him! He recently proclaimed the reasons for Ron Jost's narrow victory over Larry Miskel for Republican nominee for the office of Gasconade County Presiding Commissioner. As is so often the case, "Old Hank" is wrong again.
My take on the results of the August 3rd election differs from Hank's. I say this:
- Jost won by 16 votes (maybe). 16 votes out of a total of 2788 votes cast ..... a slight margin of only 0.57%. Nothing much there to crow about! And what would a 100% manual recount of all votes cast have yielded? We will never know. Yet, "Old Hank" seems to be crowing anyway!
- Jost won because of the low voter turnout of approximately 30% county-wide. I don't understand the voter indifference! If the voters couldn't get excited about the race for Presiding Commissioner, I don't know what they can get excited about!
- Matt Penning's interview with HermannNEWS.com had little if anything to do with the election results. The Penning video interview by HermannNEWS.com reporter Anna Wiegenstein was posted on August 2nd (one day prior to the election) and remained posted on HermannNEWS.com for ONLY one day. The last I remember it had only been viewed by just a handful of readers prior to election day. Today (8/29) the three-part interview remains posted at YouTube.com. The YouTube view counts are as follows: Part 1 - 179 views, Part 2 - 129 views, and Part 3 - 99 views. Nice try "Hanksta", but I seriously doubt whether Penning's video-taped interview factored into the election results one way or the other. I only regret that the three-part video-taped interview wasn't posted on HermannNEWS.com a couple weeks earlier when it was originally recorded.
- This was Larry Miskel's first run for a county-wide office. He ran against a two-term incumbent. IF Miskel runs again, he will win! IF he and those of us who supported him had campaigned just a little bit harder, he would have won this time!
