Ohio cafe will host drag story hour despite online hate campaign
The owner of an Ohio cafe is not backing down after an online hate campaign targeted an upcoming drag story hour in her space.
Ghiovanna Lora is the owner of Coterie Lounge and Café in West Chester, Ohio, 18 miles north of Cincinnati. She opened this Black- and woman-owned space in 2024 as a place where patrons could always feel welcomed.
“I just wanted to duplicate the feeling that people get when they walk in somewhere and immediately feel like they are home,” Lora told The Buckeye Flame.
Despite the area skewing conservative and Republican – Butler County voted for President Trump by over 62% in 2024 – Lora has been committed to extending Coterie’s welcoming vibe to the LGBTQ+ community. The cafe has signs proclaiming that it is a safe space, and rainbow pins and stickers are for sale alongside items amplifying a wide variety of cultures.
“We really mean it when we say that everyone is welcome here,” Lora said.
Over the past two years, the cafe has hosted a variety of events, from book clubs to live music to community gatherings. Lora said the success of multiple drag shows in the space convinced her to branch out into hosting a family-friendly drag story hour event on April 16, featuring Hamilton-area performer Roxie D. Mocracy.
“We just wanted to do something a little bit different because our turnout for the drag shows was so big,” Lora said.
Then the online hate started. The pushback originated with a post by Darbi Boddy, founder of Access Ohio, a West Chester-based nonprofit focused on “preserving traditional American values.”
In her post, Boddy called the drag story hour a “breeding ground for potential pedophiles wrapped in glitter and sin, and it is actively corrupting our children.”
She further described Coterie as “drenched in witchcraft vibes, and straight-up demonic.”
Lora said Boddy shared her post to dozens of different groups, which then triggered more hateful comments and people calling the cafe, saying they were going to boycott Coterie.
Lora was initially worried about the blowback when she first heard about Boddy’s post.
“My stomach dropped and I didn’t know what was going to happen,” she said.
Boddy Issues
Boddy formerly served on the Lakota Local School Board but was removed in 2024 for violating the board’s attendance policy. She was unable to be present at meetings as another Republican on the board – with whom she had previously campaigned – had filed an order of protection against her for harassment and stalking.
Her tenure on the board was marked with controversy, including being served with a notice for trespassing on school property, being censured for posting links to sexual content and repeatedly yelling and disrupting meetings, including when children were present.
When ousted, Boddy compared her plight to “the same type of thing they are trying to do to [President] Trump.”
In an email to The Buckeye Flame, Boddy denounced drag story hours as “adult sexual performance art aimed at corrupting young innocent minds.”
“This exposure to inappropriate sexual promiscuity and deviance confuses children, corrupts their little minds, and exposes them to evil they shouldn’t be exposed to,” Boddy said.
The Reverse Effect
Although Lora was initially worried about the hate comments Boddy’s post stirred up, the tide of comments quickly turned positive: The posts were flooded with social media users expressing support for Coterie.
“The love from our community has been tremendous,” Lora said.
That online support quickly transferred directly into the cafe: The day after Boddy’s post, Coterie had one of the highest days of sales in recent memory. They had to add a second drag story hour to accommodate the requested ticket sales.
“Our community saw the hate and came right back with love,” Lora said.
Lora said the outpouring of support affirms the very name of her cafe – “coterie” means a small, close-knit gathering of people with shared interests and tastes – and even further strengthens her resolve to create a safe space.
As for owning a shop “drenched in witchcraft vibes, and straight-up demonic,” Lora is turning that, too, towards the positive: she’s printing those words on T-shirts to be sold at the cafe, and she has Darby Boddy to thank.
“I would honestly say ‘thank you’ to Darby because she has introduced so many new people to my cafe and given us so many good ideas for new T-shirts and new events,” Lora said. “We couldn’t have done it without her.”
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Tenants unions gain ground across Missouri as renters fight for affordable housing
Bradley Breier had just settled in Cedarwood Terrace, an affordable housing complex in Springfield, when the notice arrived that all of the tenants were being evicted from their apartments.
Takeaways
Renters across Missouri are forming tenants unions to push back on rising costs, unlivable conditions and threats of non-renewals on their leases.
Missouri has 27 affordable homes for every 100 extremely low-income households, leaving many with few options if they are forced to move.
Tenants say collective action through a union gives them leverage, but many face pushback in the face of union organizing.
The owners planned to exit a federal low-income housing program at Cedarwood Terrace, and to convert another property they controlled, Rosewood Estates, into luxury senior living.
After living with his aunt, Breier moved into Cedarwood with his parents in March 2024. But he was only there for a month when residents found out about the property owners’ plans.
Breier, now a leader with Springfield Tenants Union, said residents began talking about the future and trying to find new places to live, but there were few options that met people’s accessibility needs and budget.
“Everybody was in a similar situation,” Breier said outside a courtroom in the Greene County Courthouse. “We were going to be homeless, a lot of people, I’ll tell you that.”
Organizers from the Springfield Tenants Union gathered at Cedarwood Terrace and Rosewood Estates, where residents found themselves in the same situation. After chatting with residents, they quickly formed a tenants union.
They filed a class-action lawsuit arguing the former and current owners illegally opted out of the low-income housing program years before 2032, when the program was initially set to expire.
Now, as the case moves through the courts, Breier and other Rosewood and Cedarwood tenants union members see collective action as the only path forward for staying in their homes. Without a win in the courts, over 60 residents of the two properties will need to find new places to live by August.
“They don’t listen to us. It’s like they have one vision for one thing, and it’s not us,” Breier said of the former and current property owners, including Zimmerman Properties and some of its subsidiaries, Bryan Properties, GPS Property Management and the Missouri Housing Development Commission, whose lawyers denied a request to comment on pending litigation.
“It doesn’t include us, or what we’re struggling with,” Breier said.
For Breier and his neighbors, organizing was the last resort. But across Missouri, more renters are turning to unions as housing becomes harder to find and afford.
Missouri has 27 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income renters, leaving a shortage of nearly 130,000 rental units across the state, data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition found.
Missouri’s affordable housing strain
The organizing at Rosewood and Cedarwood wouldn’t have happened without Springfield Tenants Unite, which launched in 2020 as a response to housing difficulties people ran into during COVID-19.
One of the founding members was Vee Sanchez, now an affordable housing policy manager at Empower Missouri, which is building a statewide guidebook for tenants organizing. At the time, she was working at a restaurant and struggling to make ends meet amid the pandemic.
“A lot of people were losing their jobs. I was one of those people, our whole staff got laid off, and rent was still due,” Sanchez said. “I had never been involved in local politics prior to that … But I knew that I was coming up against some really hard times, and I started talking to my co-workers and neighbors, and I knew they were in the same boat.”
Stagnant wage growth, housing availability and rising prices can make it difficult to find affordable places to live in Missouri. Across the state, a full-time worker needs to make $21.61 an hour to afford the average fair market rent for a two-bedroom rental home in Missouri, data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition found.
For Emily Hester, who is a leader in Cedarwood and Rosewood and a single mother of five, it was essential that she get involved in the union. She’s thankful for the last two years that the union has spent fighting the eviction.
“These last two years have definitely been hard,” Hester said. “I have dealt with depression myself with the whole situation, just because looking for another house within those first couple of months, I was endlessly scrolling looking for something that was big enough. Everything was $400 to $500 more than what I was paying then. Two years later, it’s like $1,000 more just to be big enough for my family.”
“This is all over the city, it’s all over the nation,” Hester said. “Affordable housing has gone to crap all over the nation.”
Missouri follows national trends when it comes to housing availability and pricing. Nationwide from 2001 to 2024, renter incomes rose by 9% while rents rose by 30%, data from the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies found.
Across the country, rents are rising on lower-cost units while the inventory of higher-priced apartments rises, the Harvard research found.
Nearly 75% of independent landlords reported rising property ownership costs in 2025. But they also reported tenants staying in place longer, with tenants staying in place at five times the rate they are finding new places to rent.
“Our housing is everything,” Sanchez said. “So much of everything in our lives is really rooted in the stability of our housing. I think a lot of people do want to be able to have that type of security and find ways to really have a voice in that, but it can be really hard unless you’ve built this bigger collective voice.”
The drive to organize is spreading to other Missouri cities including Columbia, where renters launched a tenants union in 2025. Jack Dobbs, a founding member of the Columbia Tenants Union and recent MU graduate, initially looked to organize around the lack of leases available for students during the summer months.
He connected with Empower Missouri and organizers in the Springfield Tenants Union, who made trips to Columbia to train members how to canvass, how to have conversations about housing and handling contentious landlord relationships.
But after connecting with residents living in a handful of mobile home communities owned by the same company, Dobbs and the Columbia tenants began organizing among residents living in properties owned by Regal Communities.
Tenants there are pushing back against what they call excessive fees, nonrenewal threats and intimidation against organizing from Regal’s property manager.
“We’re trying to really get the first couple of wins here for these properties,” Dobbs said. “Hopefully we can inspire more movements to continue.”
In smaller towns the lack of affordable housing can hit communities hard. Empower’s organizers in Cape Girardeau are looking to reignite a tenants union organizing effort that struggled to make it off the ground years ago.
As the area sees population growth, more workers have moved to town, but housing supply hasn’t kept up with demand.
People will then start looking in communities near Cape Girardeau or in Illinois, said Erica Robbins, Empower’s affordable housing policy manager in Cape Girardeau.
“They come to Cape Girardeau and we get that inundation as well, which really does create a demand for rent,” Robbins said. “We don’t have enough units.”
Nearby in Perry County, the economic development authority conducted an analysis of the housing gap and found that 250 new homes will be needed in the next five years, and only nine were for sale at the time.
Organizers envision eviction protection measures for the future
Down the line, Dobbs and Columbia Tenants want to see policies passed that make it easier to be a renter in Columbia, such as a right to counsel.
“Every week, you can go to tenant court and see someone who is there and has to represent themselves against a corporate attorney,” ??WHO?? said.
In a typical year, landlords file 3.6 million eviction cases nationwide. In Missouri over the past 12 months, 6% of renter households had an eviction filed against them, according to data from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.
In Jackson County, Eviction Lab data found that 22.3% of all eviction filings came from the largest 100 properties across the county.
In states like Missouri which have few renter protections, that imbalance can be especially stark, said Bridgett Simmons, a staff attorney at the National Housing Law Project.
“Tenants unions are a really powerful tool for readjusting the imbalance we see in the rental market,” Simmons said.
Very few states have explicit protections for renters written into law, although 21 states (not including Missouri) have passed legislation making it illegal to retaliate against residents for being part of a tenants union.
Data shows that evictions can have an outsized impact on someone’s health. One study of adults on Medicaid in New York found that evicted residents were more likely to lose their insurance and to fill fewer prescriptions.
A 2015 study followed low-income urban mothers in the U.S. and found that those who experienced eviction were significantly more likely to report poor health over the past year for themselves and their children, compared to those who hadn’t experienced eviction.
The study also found that evicted mothers were more likely to report depressive symptoms, while other research found that mothers evicted during pregnancy had significantly higher likelihood of preterm birth and low birthweight than mothers who went through an eviction outside of pregnancy.
That stress and confusion are familiar for the Rosewood and Cedarwood tenants who have been in limbo for two years about the future of their housing. For now, union members are hoping their collective effort will be enough to keep them in their homes in the years to come.
“When we first started this thing, it was almost like going from absolute hopelessness to ‘I have a chance to stay. We have a chance at having safe, affordable housing and staying here,’” Breier said. “I have people here that have my back, I have their back. They have my best interest at heart, and I have their best interest at heart. For me, it’s expanded from Rosewood Cedarwood Tenants Union.”
“There’s so much good that came out of this, way more than what I ever would have thought for such a bad circumstance,” he said.
Wyoming electric utility dumps wind and solar in long-term planning
One of the key driving forces behind the expansion of wind turbines in Wyoming is gutting plans for future renewable energy projects.
Rocky Mountain Power’s parent company, PacifiCorp, updated its long-range planning document in March, shifting its previous upward trajectory for new wind and solar throughout its six-state service region to flatline status.
The electric utility has no plans to add more wind or solar facilities in Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and California from 2027 through 2045.
“Changes in this update are largely driven by the July 4, 2025, repeal of major portions of the Inflation Reduction Act,” the company says. “The repeal was enacted through the [“One Big, Beautiful Bill Act”], which, significantly, phases out or eliminates highly impactful tax benefits, primarily for renewable solar and wind generation resources.”
Rocky Mountain Power is Wyoming’s largest electric utility. PacifiCorp is part of billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway energy conglomerate.
Amid a series of rate hikes in recent years — which amount to about a 20% increase for Wyoming customers since 2020 — Rocky Mountain Power officials have testified that the company’s renewable energy additions were not the culprit, but had kept monthly electric bills from rising at an even higher rate.
“It is the company’s investment in these renewable resources that have mitigated the increase in net-power costs,” former Rocky Mountain Power President and CEO Gary Hoogeveen testified to Wyoming officials in 2023. “Without the company’s investment in these resources, the increase in net-power costs would have risen an additional $85.4 million or 65% in Wyoming.”
But the economic feasibility for wind and solar has changed, according to the utility. Federal tax credits for wind and solar had reduced the cost of wind and solar projects by about 30%, the company says. With the new phase out schedule, projects would likely have to begin construction within the next year to still qualify. That policy, along with Trump administration rollbacks for fossil fuel regulations, “may make coal a more competitive fuel source.”
The utility giant has delayed some coal power plant retirement dates in recent years, including in Wyoming, and its new long-term planning outlook notes that its greenhouse gas emissions trajectory, which had been falling, will now go up.
“The update does not look good at all for renewable energy,” Sierra Club Wyoming Chapter Organizer Emma Jones told WyoFile.
This chart depicts the change in projected carbon dioxide emissions based on PacifiCorp’s resources planning, which was updated in March 2026. (PacifiCorp)
She noted, however, that such “integrated resource plans” continually change. Regulated utilities like PacifiCorp/Rocky Mountain Power are required to file a new resource plan every two years, and they frequently update those plans between filings.
The company also notes, as do other utilities, that it is not obligated to follow the plan, which looks 20 years into the future.
Yet the planning document does create “signals” that solidify electrical generation investments in the short term, Jones noted.
“If Rocky Mountain Power is saying it’s not planning on any new wind power for 20 years, I think that does create a level of uncertainty for [renewable energy] developers,” Jones said.
Wind out of the sails
PacifiCorp is responsible for about 35% of Wyoming’s 3,700 megawatts of installed wind-generated electrical capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
One megawatt is enough electricity to power about 750 homes.
Though the company is gutting future renewable installations, there are still a few more projects to come to fruition.
“The preferred portfolio includes about 1,200 megawatts of new solar located in Utah, over 400 megawatts of new wind located in Idaho and 26 megawatts of new wind located in Wyoming,” Rocky Mountain Power spokesman David Eskelsen told WyoFile. Some of those wind and solar facilities will generate power dedicated to PacifiCorp customers in Oregon and Washington, he added.
This map depicts PacifiCorp’s Gateway interstate transmission projects, connecting Wyoming wind-generated electricity to customers throughout the utility’s multi-state service region. (PacifiCorp)
Beyond that, PacifiCorp’s retreat from renewable energy development muddies the picture for future wind development in Wyoming. Frequently, a smaller company will propose a project under its own name, but it’s building to meet the needs of a larger utility — like PacifiCorp, or Black Hills Energy.
In addition to sometimes building their own electrical generation facilities, large utilities — based on their long-range planning — solicit new wind and solar energy from the marketplace by issuing a “request for proposal.” Essentially, they tell other companies that they’re in the market for more renewable power, and if somebody takes the investment risk and works through the permitting process on their own to build a wind farm, the utility will buy the power. It might even take ownership of the facility after the developer has set it up.
Essentially, PacifiCorp has dramatically driven a lot of wind energy development in Wyoming. Now that it’s removing itself from the game, it’s unclear what’s in store for the industry. Some industry watchers speculate that Wyoming co-ops might step into the game for their own reasons, and that data centers might become a bigger driver for wind energy development.
This chart depicts PacifiCorp’s planned new wind and solar additions, according to is planning document updated in March 2026. (PacifiCorp)
Others, including Jones of the Sierra Club, insist that it’s too late to kill wind and solar energy via federal policies, because they continue to gain efficiencies that likely overcome the loss of federal tax credits. Other utilities, beholden to their ratepayers who want low-cost electrons, are likely to consider adding more renewable energy to their portfolios.
PacifiCorp, Jones speculated, will probably return to renewable energy, too.
“I think the problem is that, even if [PacifiCorp officials] decide down the road, ‘We’re going to invest in renewables again,’ the delay that they’re creating is ultimately going to cost customers money that would have been saved by putting cheaper renewable energy online sooner,” Jones said.
The general sentiment in the utility industry, Jones added, is that it’s cheaper to build today than it is years down the road. “The longer we wait to build out infrastructure to meet the demands of customers, the more we’re going to have to pay in the long run.”
Elizabethtown, Tupper Lake and Ticonderoga inch toward water solutions
A trio of longstanding water infrastructure problems across the Adirondack Park are gradually moving toward solutions, though town leaders continue to call for more support from state officials.
Elizabethtown expects to advance engineering designs for its planned new public sewer system this year. Tupper Lake is on the verge of testing well sites and locating a new treatment plant. And a task force in Ticonderoga is exploring options it hopes will allow a wilderness pond to continue being used as a water source for a pocket of residents around Eagle Lake.
For years, leaders of all three towns have sought to address core water issues that stymie economic growth and threaten public and environmental health. Tupper Lake and Ticonderoga are both under standing orders to move away from surface water drinking sources — or adopt costly treatment technologies — while Elizabethtown has long considered establishing a municipal sewer system, the only county seat in the state without one.
While still far from sure things, community leaders are growing more hopeful they may be closer than ever to finding long-term solutions to the persistent challenges. Adirondack projects are seeking tens of millions of dollars to rehab public drinking and wastewater systems, and some communities are banking grant wins and dollars.
A public sewer working group meets to discuss the Elizabethtown project. Explorer file photo by Tim Rowland
During a recent visit to Albany, she met with Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Amanda Lefton and briefly pitched the project to Gov. Kathy Hochul at an event. Reusser later hosted a meeting with staff from DEC and the Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC), resulting in suggestions for ways Elizabethtown could bolster its chances at future state dollars.
A $500,000 grant from the Northern Border Regional Commission along with $125,000 of the town’s money will support more detailed engineering plans, which could in turn boost the town’s state grant scores. The town recently signed a contract for the engineering plans, which Reusser said would take most of the year to complete.
The plan is to establish a wastewater treatment plant on town land near a public golf course and run sewers in a new sewer district comprising much of the hamlet.
“I’m feeling very optimistic about this,” Reusser said.
The project, which also includes decommissioning current septic systems, is estimated to cost around $38 million. Elizabethtown in recent years has unsuccessfully applied for EFC funding, conducting a door-to-door income survey and stream water sampling to improve its chances.
Reusser said she doesn’t think residents of the sewer districts — shown through the income survey to have median household income of less than $35,000 — should have to shoulder the cost burden of building the system. She said she hoped to build a financing package through state funding and a mix of other grant programs, as well as payments from the system’s largest users.
“It is very loudly stated that those folks can’t afford a lot,” Reusser said. “Operations and maintenance is the only thing you can realistically put on those household ratepayers.”
“This is still not a for-sure project,” she said. “But I think we have done a great job of painting the picture of a disadvantaged community and the absolute necessity of this project for the health and wellness of the tributaries to the Boquet River and ultimately the health of Lake Champlain.”
Fixing brown water in Tupper Lake
Tupper Lake is also pursuing a major infrastructure project to move its drinking water supply completely to groundwater sources and resolve a persistent problem with browning and discoloration caused by high levels of iron and manganese.
Like many other communities, Tupper Lake was ordered to move from surface water to groundwater sources but has struggled to fully replace its previous sources with reliable wells.
The community, which still gets about one-third of its water supply from Simond Pond, explored both options, said village mayor Mary Fontana, but determined a new treatment plant and a third well was the best option.
“Groundwater is the most sustainable and affordable option for the community,” Fontana said.
Downtown Tupper Lake. Explorer file photo
Tupper Lake has also struggled to win the state funding its leaders say are needed to make the project work. State lawmakers have raised Tupper Lake’s challenges specifically with state officials during public hearings. Fontana said she continues to make the case that it should be a priority for the state.
“I think supplying clean drinking water to a rural community in the Adirondack Park should be at the top of that list,” Fontana said.
Residents have been deeply frustrated by the discoloration that has persisted since switching to groundwater wells, regularly posting pictures on social media of brownish water filling drinking glasses and bathtubs.
“This has been an issue for the town for 34 years,” O’Bryan said. “One of my goals was to hopefully solve it.”
O’Bryan established a task force charged with evaluating options. He said he hopes to move toward a plan to set up a new water district for Eagle Lake residents, while finding a viable treatment option at Gooseneck that will pass muster with regulators.
Alternatively, the town is using state funds to study potential wellfield sites that could also supply Eagle Lake residents with a drinking source. He said an engineer that specializes in ultraviolet filtration will meet with the task force in the coming weeks.
Gooseneck Pond, looking east from Pharaoh Mountain. Photo by Tim Rowland
“There are very few waters you will find in the Adirondacks with as clean of water as Gooseneck,” O’Bryan said.
He said he hoped in the long term they could also find a way to send water downhill from Gooseneck to Ticonderogra to mix with the town’s existing well sources to help reduce that water’s hardness.
For other communities, success comes slowly
For seven straight years, Lake Luzerne applied for a $1.5 million grant from EFC to upgrade its aging drinking water system. Last year it asked for $1.75 million to account for rising costs.
Every request was rejected.
“We get the same form letter,” said Jim Niles, who took over as Lake Luzerne supervisor earlier this year. “It says your application was excellent, but we didn’t have enough funding to get to you. It’s been kind of disappointing.”
Niles said after several years of sending in the same application, Lake Luzerne started to make more tweaks in recent years, hoping more details would improve its chances — still to no avail.
“If we keep striking out on some of these grants, at some point we are going to have to borrow some money,” Niles said. “We can’t keep kicking the can down the road.”
But the village recently landed a federal grant to cover similar needs, thanks to U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik. Niles said those funds will support upgrading old water storage and distribution lines. There’s still more work to do, he said.
“Our whole system is old,” Niles said.
In Bloomingdale, the Town of St. Armand recently landed a $5 million grant and over $5 million in interest-free financing to replace its drinking water treatment plant, specifically to address the threat of PFOAs, commonly known as “forever chemicals.”
Supervisor Davina Thurston said the community’s water is not in violation of the current regulatory standard for PFOAs, commonly known as “forever chemicals,” but could in the future as those thresholds are expected to be lowered.
“My whole focus is to get as much grant funds as humanly possible so that our ratepayers are not given the brunt of these expenses,” she said.
“There is no doubt in my mind that these projects are critical for affordable housing,” Thurston said.
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Flight data offers another look at Colorado’s snowpack. The view is grim.
GRAND JUNCTION — In a Colorado Mesa University ballroom Tuesday, about 200 farmers, water professionals and community members watched as the Colorado River District staff flipped through graph after graph during a presentation.
Each new slide had one fundamental message: Colorado and downstream states are heading into summer with epicly poor water conditions.
“If there’s anything in your memory about a dry year that you’ve seen, a warm year that you’ve seen, 2026 is beyond all of that,” said Raquel Flinker, the district’s director of interstate and regional water resources.
Research groups, news organizations and water officials have been blaring warnings about the worst snowpack in history and water supply concerns heading into the summer. In some ways, conditions are so bad, the state is headed into uncharted territory, experts said. In the face of a worrisome year, farmers, reservoir operators and city utilities are focused on getting the best data possible. They’re turning to scientists and pilots with newfangled snowpack measurement methods — plus the tried-and-true measurement methods used since the early 1900s.
Their goal: Figure out how to use a scant water supply as effectively as possible.
“There’s not a lot of snow out there, nor has there been,” said Jeff Deems, co-founder and chief technical officer with Airborne Snow Observatories Inc. “We’ve had very little snow and it’s melting early.”
The ASO teams found themselves in a flurry of activity in March. The company, born out of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, takes to the skies and slopes each year to snag snow measurements using laser technology and staff members’ own two feet.
Their flights provide a highly detailed and accurate snapshot of conditions in each watershed. Water managers use the ASO lidar maps (short for a remote sensing method called light detection and ranging) to complement federal data. In all, it gives reservoir operators, city water utilities and water officials a better idea of how much water is in the mountains — and what their summer water supply might be.
ASO did 18 flights in seven days across Colorado, from St. Vrain and Big Thompson watersheds in northern Colorado to the Rio Grande, Boulder Creek, Roaring Fork and Dolores watersheds in central and southern parts of the state. What they found was more grim data.
“It’s been pretty frantic,” Deems said.
Fine-tuning the data
Mountain snowpack is a vital water source for Coloradans and downstream communities in 19 states and Mexico. For decades, Colorado communities have relied on federal data provided by snow-telemetry stations, which often feature small sheds outfitted with scientific gear in remote parts of the mountains.
These measurement stations, called the SNOTEL network, provide continuous data and many stations have accrued decades of historical data.
The network has been around since the 1970s and is made up of over 900 stations in the West, 114 of which are in Colorado. Researchers have been taking widespread manual measurements since the early 1900s.
According to SNOTEL data, Colorado’s snowpack was at 24% of its 30-year norm as of Wednesday, the same date, April 8, that usually marks its peak each year. The snowpack for the roughly 250,000-square-mile Colorado River Basin was at about 25% of its norm, according to a Colorado Basin River Forecast Center update Tuesday morning — one day after the basin’s normal peak date, April 6.
Colorado’s historically low snowpack showed at Red Mountain Pass in southwest Colorado Wednesday, April 8, 2026. The statewide snowpack typically peaks on April 8 each year. (Shannon Mullane, The Colorado Sun)
But SNOTEL stations miss snow below 9,000 feet and above 12,000 feet. They are a point measurement: They don’t, and can’t, actually measure an entire basin.
ASO flights capture all elevations in a watershed, instead of just one point. In the past these flights have found more water in Colorado watersheds than appeared in SNOTEL data. But the flights only provide a snapshot of winter conditions, on a certain day at a certain time, instead of a continuous historical record.
This year, not so much. Some parts of watersheds are doing better or worse than indicated by the SNOTEL stations, Deems said. But by and large, the ASO data is lining up with SNOTEL measurements and federal river forecast centers.
“There is quite a lot less snow than we’re used to having. No surprise there,” he said.
The ASO teams flew over the Blue River watershed near Silverthorne and Breckenridge. The terrain funnels water into the 65-mile waterway that eventually flows into the Colorado River, the lifeblood for communities, farms, environments and industries in much of the Southwest and parts of northern Mexico.
The Blue River also feeds Dillon Reservoir, an important water source for Denver Water, Colorado’s oldest water utility, and about 1.5 million people in the Denver area.
For most of the watershed, the snowpack on March 20 was about half what it was on April 11, 2025.
But ASO also found variations in watersheds. Some areas are substantially worse than last year. Other parts are about the same as last year, he said.
And knowing exactly where water is — and isn’t — can help reservoir managers and city planners use water more efficiently this summer.
“That’s not like a miracle save or anything,” Deems said. “But what that says is that there’s enough complexity out there that we need to measure it carefully so that those managers understand that there may be more water in parts of their watersheds than is suggested by one or two (SNOTEL) stations.”
Planning for a hot, dry summer
As snowpack melts, irrigation district managers in the Grand Valley, an area with some of the most secure, reliable and oldest water rights in the state, are trying to decide how to handle their water supply for the summer, some said at the Colorado River District gathering Tuesday.
Long-time peach growers in Palisade are keeping an eye on the skies as they aim for efficient water use.
Everybody is trying to be very cautious, said Priscilla Walker, a Palisade resident whose family has owned peach orchards for decades.
“Peaches don’t use the water as much as alfalfa and subdivisions,” she said. “Would you rather have the best peaches in the world or fountains, neon signs, swimming pools and Kentucky bluegrass lawns? That’s really the choice because we have no control over how much water falls.”
The next question for water managers is: How much will actually end up in reservoirs?
Some of the snow simply turns directly into water vapor in a process called sublimation. Plants and soils suck up snowmelt as it passes through watersheds toward rivers. Some water can evaporate along the way.
“All of these factors affect what fraction of the snowpack we get as runoff,” Deems said. “Last year, one of the stories was that runoff efficiency was quite low. Given the hot, dry, windy weather that we’ve had, we might expect similarly very low runoff efficiencies this year.”
In the wake of Centra’s Farmville maternity care closure, some families say the risk to have more kids might be too high
Leigh Erin Engle always wanted four children. Both of her parents came from families with three siblings, and they always said that one of the kids was left out.
“Four always felt right,” said Engle, 33. She just had her third child in October and was planning the fourth one sometime next year to keep the children’s ages evenly spaced apart.
But when the Centra Southside Community Hospital in Farmville closed its labor and delivery unit and its obstetrics and gynecology services in December, the closest place to deliver moved to an hour away, making Engle and her husband make a difficult decision — no more kids.
Now three has to be enough because the risk of not having a qualified hospital nearby in case of complications, as well as the financial and time burdens of going for regular check-ups prior to a birth, are too much. They are considering a vasectomy for her husband, she said.
“I traveled an hour to deliver my first child and I never want to do that again,” said Engle. “If I wanted prenatal care I would use up too much PTO going to appointments an hour away and wouldn’t have close local support to feel safe continuing to grow my family. This is part of many cuts and a gross lack of resources in the area to support families.”
Engle is not alone. Several families near Farmville told Charlottesville Tomorrow that now that Southside cut its services they are concerned about having kids without obstetric care nearby and are either deciding not to have more children or delaying it.
The concerns are the same — long drives and time commitments, especially for those who already have kids to make arrangements for. The increased cost that comes with the drives, possible hotel stays and, in a worst-case scenario, ambulance or helicopter rides to a qualified hospital if there is an emergency. And, of course, there is also a risk to mothers and children’s health.
Katy Kozhimannil, a co-director of University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center, whose research focuses on maternal healthcare in rural areas, said she didn’t know of any studies that measured how the lack of resources affects family planning and whether or not women want to have kids. Still, she wasn’t surprised to hear about women in Virginia who have reservations in response to disappearing care.
Leigh Erin Engle holds her third child in her hospital bed. She and her husband always planned on having four kids, but after the closure of Centra’s labor and delivery unit in Farmville, they have decided the risk of a fourth pregnancy is too high. Photo courtesy of Leigh Erin Engle.
“Women are very smart,” said Kozhimannil. “I can imagine for mothers, when the level of risk changes, that changes their decisions about whether or not they are willing and feeling supported enough in their community, in their environment, in their health care system, to have the number of children they want to have.”
There is a lot of data to prove that there are reasons for concern.
Multiple studies, including Kozhimannil’s own, have found that when rural areas lose access to obstetric care they experience higher rates of premature births, which is the leading cause of infant mortality, she said. It also means more out of hospital births, whether planned or unplanned, as well as a higher number of births in the emergency departments, and not every emergency clinician is comfortable handling obstetric emergencies.
On its web page about the closure, Centra said that its Southside Emergency Department staff was prepared to handle active labor and obstetrical emergencies, and that it had transport protocols.
Charlottesville Tomorrow repeatedly tried to get more details from Centra but received no response.
There are still some obstetric services left in Farmville — Central Virginia Health Services (CVHS), a non-profit classified as a Federally Qualified Health Center, offers a variety of medical services regardless of patients’ ability to pay. There, nurse midwives see patients for prenatal care three days a week. They don’t deal with emergencies or deliver. Historically, it’s something they transferred patients to Centra for. Now they are working with other hospitals to make such arrangements, said Paula Tomko, CVHS chief executive officer.
But its services can’t be a full substitute. Midwives cannot be there when someone has an emergency in the middle of the night.
A 2022 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that women in rural areas are at higher risk of maternal mortality or intensive care unit admission in comparison to urban areas.
The absence of obstetric services also means that women don’t have easy access to postpartum care to address any mental or physical concerns, which is a problem because more than half of maternal deaths happen in a year after giving birth, Kozhimannil said.
“There are many different scenarios, all those are challenges that rural families could encounter,” said Kozhimannil.
Why Centra cut its labor and delivery services
Centra gave three reasons for its decision to close its obstetric services, all reflecting national trends for rural healthcare. There were too few births to justify the service — fewer than 275 babies last year, according to Stephanie McBride, Centra’s director of communications.
Lastly, there were federal funding changes to healthcare.
“We are facing significant financial headwinds, especially from recently enacted cuts in federal healthcare funding. These realities mean we must reassess and reallocate services for our community,” McBride wrote in an email in November.
Though she didn’t name Medicaid specifically, national experts have warned about its potential cuts’ harms to mothers and children. Medicaid covers 40% of U.S. births, as well as children’s healthcare and up to a year of postpartum care in states that expanded coverage beyond the original 60 days.
All of these reasons echo through the closures of other labor and delivery units across the country. Since the end of 2020, 130 rural hospitals have either stopped delivering babies or announced plans to end those services by the end of this year, according to a report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, a national health policy center.
Today, only 41% of rural hospitals in the U.S. still provide labor and delivery services — and in a dozen states, that share drops below one-third, according to the report.
In Virginia, 63% of counties don’t have an OB-GYN, and 22% of rural residents travel over 40 minutes to reach a labor and delivery unit, according to a news release from former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office about requesting $1 billion in federal funding to improve rural healthcare. Improving the pipeline of people into healthcare professions is among the priorities Youngkin listed as a purpose for the funds.
In Kozhimannil’s experience, rural hospitals provide obstetric care as long as they can — closing only when financial or quality-of-care risks become too high.
“However, after an obstetric unit closure, those risks do not disappear. The hospital stops holding the risks, and risk remains with the families in our communities. It remains with any local clinic or clinicians, and it remains with the EMTs, the first responders, the volunteer EMTs, the volunteer fire fighters, the county sheriff who are figuring out how pregnant women get help when they need care urgently or when something goes wrong,” she said.
It’s a change that could have rippling effects for the community.
“It’s a disincentive for folks to want to move here, and to have families here,” said Susie Thomas, a lead pastor at Farmville United Methodist Church. And it comes at the time as the community has been investing into improving the school system to make it more attractive to families.
“It’s really a blow to try to attract people to come here and share their lives with us in Farmville.”
The ripple effects continue spreading
Just like Engle, Dana Freeman Walker feels that the risk of having more kids without obstetric care nearby is too high.
Walker, a Charlotte County mother of three, also always wanted an even number of kids. She and her husband had planned on two, but her last pregnancy was twins. So, they decided they wanted a fourth child.
Dana Freeman Walker, a mother in Charlotte County, always wanted four kids. But with the recent closure of the labor and delivery unit in Farmville — already a forty minute drive from home — she is hesitant. What if she has another high-risk pregnancy? Driving two hours for appointments to another hospital will be too much. Photo courtesy of Dana Freeman Walker
Then Centra closed its obstetric services in Farmville, putting the plan on pause.
Southside, the closest hospital to her home, is 40 minutes away. Now, if she were to get pregnant again, the drive to see a doctor and deliver would be two hours one way. They worry about what might happen if her next pregnancy turns out to be another high-risk one.
When she was pregnant with twins, she developed Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome, a dangerous complication causing uneven blood sharing between twins. To manage the risks, she was seen weekly in Farmville, getting ultrasounds and making sure everything looked good and the babies were developing appropriately.
“Now, if something like that happens, it means an almost two-hour commute once a week, every week. And it’s almost two hours one way. That’s just something that weighs heavily on us, because, as you know, gas prices are $4 a gallon now,” she said. And there is a question of who would watch the kids while she is gone — the day care is in Farmville, out of the way. So there would be an additional expense to hire a sitter.
Like many who spoke with Charlottesville Tomorrow, Walker hopes Centra will reverse course and bring back obstetric services. In the meantime, she and her husband are putting off having another child.
“It’s a pause to think, recalibrate, pray that they change their minds.”
A bi candidate runs to unseat Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman in rural Ohio
Jeff Givan poses in front of the Allen County Courthouse. (Courtesy of Jeff Givan)
Jeff Givan and his husband were the second gay couple to be married in rural Allen County, Ohio, back in 2015. Nearly 11 years later, Givan is running for the state House of Representatives in the county seat of Lima to defeat Republican Rep. Matt Huffman, Ohio’s current speaker of the House.
Givan said Lima is tired of Huffman dismantling the public school system. Givan also wants to protect marriage equality and ramp up funding for preventative healthcare services.
He would also use his position to help others understand that queer people are on the frontline fighting for everyone’s civil rights, he said.
“I don’t think a lot of people realize that what happens to us will happen to others – it’s the same way with people of color,” Givan said. “We got to get to a point where it’s not this big issue any longer. We’re just human beings.”
Background
Givan was born in Colorado and raised in Texas. He lived in California for much of his adult life working in sales and management roles, he said. Once his partner started battling cancer, Givan moved to his partner’s hometown of Lima in 2012. They married in 2015, and his husband died a year later.
Givan stayed in Lima and began to involve himself in the community, he said. After Trump was elected in 2016, Givan worked with LGBTQ+ congregants at his local Unitarian Universalist church to build a more visible queer community in Allen County.
“There was a real lack of LGBTQ+ community,” Givan recalled. “We’re one of those towns where kids graduate high school and leave, especially LGBTQ+ kids, because there’s nothing here for them.”
With the help of the Allen County’s Democratic Party, Givan and other volunteers hosted Lima’s first Pride event – a picnic – last July. Later, Givan co-founded the more formal Lima Pride Alliance.
Alongside his LGBTQ+ advocacy, Givan has also volunteered at his local YMCA, particularly to help those seeking addiction recovery.
‘I’m really in it for the community’
After the U.S. enacted a coup in Venezuela by kidnapping the country’s president last January, Givan had enough. He called the chairperson of the county’s Democratic headquarters and asked if they had funds to support an LGBTQ+ candidate.
He was suggesting other LGBTQ+ leaders in Allen County, but Givan said they didn’t want to run.
“I’d never been in politics before, but somebody’s gotta do it,” he said.
Huffman introduced Ohio’s current state budget, Sub. HB 96, which led to a dramatic reduction in state funding for public schools. Huffman continues to champion private school vouchers and wants to expand the program’s eligibility requirements.
Huffman’s support for vouchers instead of funding public schools has soured Lima residents, Givan said.
“Our school districts have taken a serious hit,” he said. “Not only are they having the money taken away from them, but they’re having to provide services [to private schools] which is going to — especially in a lot of small towns — take away the bus service.”
Jeff Givan addresses an audience. (Courtesy of Jeff Givan)
Besides education, Givan wants to restore and increase funding for preventative healthcare programs that serve low-income Ohioans.
“I think there’s some things we need to change on how the system is set up on the lower end,” he said. “We’re going to be setting up a committee of all kinds of different healthcare [leaders] and really examine what needs to happen [for] potential policies.”
If elected, Givan said he would continue to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and protect trans youth from harmful legislation. He’s had people come up to him and thank him for running because they have LGBTQ+ children who feel threatened.
“I had a very good friend who moved to Portugal to get away from [the U.S.],” Givan said. “They don’t feel safe, so we have to feel safe in our communities. That’s one of the reasons we started the Lima Pride Alliance — we got to feel safe.”
Progress so far
Givan submitted his petition to run for office right on deadline, so he said he’s just starting to spread the word about his campaign. He faces an uphill battle, as 70% of Allen County voters favored Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, with over two-thirds of the area turning out for the election.
Givan thinks this midterm’s foreshadowed “blue wave” will carry him through, despite the numbers. He’s already made progress with his neighbor across the street who votes Republican, he said. His campaign convinced him to vote against Huffman in this year’s midterm election in November.
“We’ve got a fairly large block of independent voters here, although they tend to lean either red or blue,” Givan said. “People are kind of tired. It’s time for some new thoughts.”
IGNITE ACTION
To learn more about Lima Pride Alliance, click here for its Facebook page.
To learn more about Jeff Givan’s candidacy, click here for his campaign’s website.
To register to vote or to check your voter eligibility status in the state of Ohio, click here.
To find contact information for your Ohio state representative, click here.
To find contact information for your Ohio state senator, click here.
On a heat-wavy late winter’s day, a farmer drives a tractor churning chopped wheat and barley into the earth, preparing the fields for yet another season. That land in southern San Benito County once hosted garlic. In just two months, it will have cannabis planted there and become one of the first in the county to do so.
Jordan Blancarte, whose family owns the property, watches from a nearby hill. Formerly a physicist who studied plasma and the magnetic field at the University of California, Berkeley, he switched paths in 2019 and now directs an organic cannabis and hemp farm on the Central Coast called Orso Farms. He spent his first years in the county growing hemp, a variety of cannabis without its main psychoactive compound, and is now growing cannabis for the first time.
“San Benito is a fantastic environment for cannabis to grow naturally,” Blancarte says. “We’ve got nice warm summers, which the plants love, and not as much moisture as some of the other counties have.”
Though San Benito County first allowed cannabis cultivation and sales in 2018, six years passed without a single legal farmer growing cannabis. Blancarte, county officials, and supervisors say this was the result of a cost-prohibitive tax structure that set an annual rate of $3 to $17 per square foot, one of the highest in California.
To address this, the Board of Supervisors approved, in late 2024, a tax exemption that runs through the end of 2026. But the supervisors’ bigger bet is Measure D, the only initiative county voters will decide on June 2, which aims to overhaul the tax structure to attract more growers.
If Measure D passes, the board will replace the current per-square-foot rate in the unincorporated county with a per-acre rate ranging from $1,000 to $10,000. The board would then set the exact rate within that range.
At a Feb. 24 meeting, Supervisor Kollin Kosmicki suggested a rate of $2,000 per acre had been discussed with industry stakeholders, which would give San Benito County one of the lowest cannabis cultivation tax rates in the state. Other cannabis businesses—such as distribution, manufacturing, laboratory testing, and retail—are taxed differently and would not be modified.
“The previous tax structure was not really set up for outdoor cultivation,” Blancarte says. “It was really set for indoor cultivation in mind. Outdoor cultivation is on a much larger scale, and the tax structure needs to understand the difference between indoor and outdoor cultivation. Square footage is not how farmers work.”
Orso Farms plans to plant 35 acres of 60 cannabis varieties on these South San Benito County parcels, currently covered by cover crops. Photo by Juan Pablo Pérez Burgos.
In the ballot argument in favor of the measure, the Board of Supervisors argues the new tax structure will attract more growers and increase county revenue to fund essential services.
“This new tax structure would collect much-needed revenue for county services like law enforcement, fire protection, road improvements, and other essential community needs,” reads the ballot argument signed by Board Chair Dom Zanger.
The measure has no known opponents, and no one has filed arguments against it. The only dissenting voice has been Supervisor Ignacio Velazquez, who voted against placing the measure on the ballot. Though he supported lowering the tax rate, he said the proposed rates were too low and was worried they would not generate enough revenue to cover the cost of increased enforcement and that the county could end up subsidizing cannabis.
A fiscal analysis by County Auditor-Controller Joe Paul Gonzalez estimated that by 2028 the county could earn as much as $20 million with the new rates. Though he said the county may face higher administrative and regulatory costs, those are expected to be “partially or fully offset” by tax revenues and permitting fees. He also warned that the projections depend on market conditions that have proven volatile.
“The California cannabis market has experienced significant price volatility and competition among producing regions, which may affect the number of operators willing to establish cultivation operations in San Benito County,” Gonzalez wrote. “As a result, actual revenue may vary significantly from estimates.”
A local cannabis farm
Like any other businessperson, Blancarte closely monitors the policies affecting his sector across California. As counties have been lowering the tax rates they set after legalization in 2016, he saw the county’s 2025 exemption as an opening into a place where he had always wanted to grow. Since the exemption took effect, four growers have set down roots in the county, including Blancarte, and one more grow is pending approval.
With 30 full-time employees, Blancarte is currently preparing about 85 acres in south county to grow about 60 varieties of cannabis. Cannabis cultivation, whether indoor or outdoor, is permitted in agricultural and industrial areas of the county. It is not allowed in residential or rural zones; and in the airport district, it requires special approval.
Unlike indoor cultivation, outdoor cannabis is subject to the cycles of the earth, just like any other crop.
“We get only one shot,” Blancarte says. “Indoor cultivation can do multiple cycles per year. We have one season.”
After harvest, Orso Farms stores cannabis in these giant freezers before selling it to manufacturers. Photo by Juan Pablo Pérez Burgos
During the winter, his crew planted wheat, barley, and other cover crops to enrich the soil with nutrients before the cannabis goes in. Meanwhile, Orso Farms grows its starter plants in nurseries in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties.
In June, when the seedlings reach about six inches tall, they will be transported to San Benito County and planted.
California has very strict rules for growing cannabis. Every plant must be individually tagged and tracked through a state system from the moment it is planted until it reaches the consumer. Growers must also keep security cameras running around the clock across their entire property.
Harvest comes in October. Orso Farms will bring in up to 400 seasonal workers to cut the plants and pack them into large freezers on site, where hundreds of pounds of cannabis are stored until they are sold to manufacturers who turn them into the products Californians can find at dispensaries.
Blancarte is considering planting about 100 more acres next year on other fields in his property, but that hope depends, among other things, on what voters decide on Measure D.
Cannabis, he argues, is a great opportunity for farmers in San Benito County. Unlike garlic, which requires rotation to prevent disease, cannabis can be grown on the same land and fits naturally into crop rotation cycles. That flexibility, he says, makes it an attractive option for farmland that might otherwise sit idle.
“There are less and less opportunities for farmers to keep their land active,” he says. “We’re seeing more farmland in this part of the county turn into other things than agriculture, like home developments. This is an opportunity for farmers to have a profitable crop.”
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PIERRE, S.D. – The field is set for the 2026 South Dakota Primary Election on June 2 for state legislative races as well as governor, U.S. House and U.S. Senate.
Since Democrats had only one nominee qualify for each of the three statewide primary contests, those candidates are automatically that party’s nominee for the Nov. 3 general election and will not appear on the June ballot.
What questions do you have for the GOP governor candidates? The next Republican governor’s debate is Monday, April 13. It will be streamed and air live on SDPB at 8 p.m. CT and will be co-moderated by South Dakota News Watch. Send questions you have for the candidates to alexander.rifaat@sdnewswatch.org or text 605-736-4396.
While the deadline for candidates to submit the required signatures was March 31, it typically takes state election workers several days to verify their veracity. Challenges to a candidate’s signatures must be filed by 5 p.m. today, Friday, April 10.
Here is a rundown of the June 2 primary election races.
Statewide, legislative, local offices
Governor: Aberdeen businessman Toby Doeden, state House Speaker Jon Hansen, U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson and Gov. Larry Rhoden all qualified for the GOP primary contest after collecting the required 2,171 signatures. Now each candidate will hope they get 35% of the vote and avoid a runoff election eight weeks later. The winner of the contest will meet Democrat Dan Ahlers in the general election.
U.S. House of Representatives: Since Johnson has declined to seek reelection for Congress to run for governor, the state’s only congressional seat is open. Attorney General Marty Jackley is being challenged by James Bialota Jr. for the GOP nomination and the chance to face off against Democrat Nicole “Nikki” Gronli in November.
U.S. Senate: Incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds is being challenged by Justin McNeal on the GOP primary ballot. The winner of that contest will take on Democrat Julian Beaudion in the general election.
Legislature, county and local races: In addition to statewide offices, hundreds of other candidates qualified for legislative and county and local races, including county treasurer, auditor, finance officer, sheriff, register of deeds, coroner and county commissioner as well as school board, mayor, city council and others. That full list is available on the Secretary of State’s website.
Voter portal: Find out if you’re registered to vote and which legislative district you live in through the Voter Information Portal.
Constitutional and statutory offices
While voters elect candidates for governor in the primary election, political parties choose other state executive candidates at conventions.
Here are the constitutional and statutory offices that have elections in 2026: lieutenant governor, attorney general, auditor, secretary of state, treasurer, commissioner of School and Public Lands and Public Utilities Commission.
The South Dakota Democratic Party holds its convention June 6 in Sioux Falls. The Republican party’s convention is June 25-27 in Rapid City.
Temperature check: Republican
Republican Sen. Jim Mehlhaff of Pierre, majority leader of the state Senate, expects comfortable wins for Jackley and Rounds in their respective primary races. He thinks the gubernatorial contest could come down to either Johnson or Rhoden, pouring skepticism on a poll released last month that showed Doeden ahead of the current governor.
“I don’t think it will hold water in the long term,” Mehlhaff told News Watch. “It doesn’t mean Toby Doeden isn’t running a hard race, I just don’t think he’s there yet.”
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In terms of the state legislative races, Mehlhaff, who faces two primary challengers for his seat in District 24, said a theme he has noticed this election cycle is several incumbent state senators who lost their seat in 2024 are attempting to make a comeback.
That includes former Sen. Jean Hunhoff of Yankton challenging current Sen. Lauren Nelson for the GOP nomination in District 18. Hunhoff lost to Nelson by fewer than 100 votes in the 2024 Republican primary.
Other examples Mehlhaff cited include former Democratic Sen. Erin Tobin, who is looking to take back District 21 from Republican Sen. Mykala Voita, and District 3, where there will be a rematch between former Sen. Katherine “Katie” Washnok and the incumbent, fellow Republican Sen. Carl Perry.
Melhalff said the 2024 primary results could have been impacted by the lack of competitive statewide races, something that isn’t the case this year with the high-profile contests, including statewide races for governor, U.S. House and U.S. Senate.
“There was no big draw to drive turnout, and this time obviously there is, so I think we are going to see a much bigger turnout,” Melhaff said. “It will be interesting to see how that affects all those rematches.”
Temperature check: Democrat
On the Democratic side, Rep. Erik Muckey of Sioux Falls praised his party’s nominees for statewide office and believes, with Republicans set to be engaged in a number of vicious primary battles, his party could give the GOP a run for its money in the general election.
“Above all, they each possess something South Dakotans value: ability to cast a vision for the future and focus on the state above partisanship. That’s something we sorely lack right now as a state,” Muckey told News Watch in a text message.
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In addition to laying out their plan to address issues pertinent to South Dakota, Muckey said Democrats across the state will highlight growing public disapproval of President Donald Trump’s performance, including his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and the war against Iran.
“Republican leadership locally and nationally consistently places party above state and country. It’s time for South Dakotans to be prioritized over politics, and our candidates will bring the message and the actions to back it up,” he said.
South Dakota News Watch is an independent nonprofit. Read, donate and subscribe for free at sdnewswatch.org. Contact politics and statehouse reporter Alexander Rifaat: 605-736-4396/alexander.rifaat@sdnewswatch.org.
