Hanus Hangs On

By a margin of just 15 votes, incumbent Kris Hanus has won a second four-year term as the mayor of Rhinelander. 

Hanus held off challenger Tom Barnett by less than a percentage point, defeating the District 1 alderman 798-783.

“I’d like to thank everyone who voted and everyone who got involved and talked about it,” Hanus told the River News Wednesday morning. “The last time around, I had 600 votes; this time we’re in (about) 800, so this is something where I think more people have seen what we have done. Turnout was up, which is great to see people getting involved.”

 Hanus acknowledged, as evidenced by the close race, there’s work ahead as he prepares for a second term.

“My opponent, Mr. Barnett, as well as myself, we’re both known entities in the city. We both had different directions of how to move it forward,” he said. “On the other hand, 15 votes was the gap between us. So this tells me we still have a lot of work to do to get a lot of people happy and moving the city in the right direction.”

Barnett had not returned the River News’ phone messages for comment prior to press time but posted the following comment on his campaign Facebook page early Wednesday morning: 

“I want to take a moment to thank everyone who supported this campaign…..your time, your energy, your belief in what we were building together meant more than I can put into words. We believed in a new way forward for Rhinelander. A vision rooted in honesty, respect, and a commitment to doing things the right way. And I am incredibly proud of the campaign we ran and the conversations we started across our community. While I’m deeply disappointed in the results, I respect the decision of the voters of Rhinelander. That’s what democracy is about. To those who stood with me….I’m sorry if I’ve let anyone down. Everything I did was because I care deeply about this city and the people in it. Thank you.” 

Barnett continues in his seat on the Rhinelander city council.

City experiences ballot shortage

Election-watchers had some anxious hours late Tuesday when returns from the city of Rhinelander weren’t posted until after midnight.

“We ran out of the ballots that can be read by the tabulator (machine),” Rhinelander city clerk Austyn Zarda explained, adding that they had run out for “a few different wards.” 

So that the remaining voters would still be able to cast ballots, “we got ballot proofs from the county, printed those ballots, but those ballots could not be fed into the tabulator, so then the chief election inspector and I and the rest of us, we had to hand-count a considerable amount of ballots, which delayed us in terms of being able to report our numbers, because we had to double-check and triple-check and all that,” Zarda said.

“We usually order enough ballots that we’re well above when we would break a turnout record, just because we don’t ever want to run out of ballots, because it does create a lot of extra work for us,” he added.

“We’re going to investigate further on why we did (run out) to avoid that happening, especially come August and November, because those are much larger ballots than we had for this one and don’t want to run into that issue again.”

Rhinelander City Council

Four city council seats were up for election. Incumbents LeAnn Felten of District 2, Bob Lueder of District 4 and Steven Jopek of District 8 all ran unopposed. 

With District 6’s David Holt deciding not to run for re-election, Linnaea Newman ran unopposed for the seat.

School District of Rhinelander

Five candidates competed for three seats on the School District of Rhinelander board of education.

The incumbents prevailed, those top three voter-getters being Mike Roberts (2,872), Merlin Van Buren (2,663) and Duane Frey (2,596). They defeated Bill Freudenberg (2,190) and Doug Artus (1,288).

Oneida County board

There were three contested races on the ballot, the closest of which came in District 11 — covering the town of Crescent. There incumbent Robb Jensen was re-elected to another term, defeating challenger Keven Mahner by a scant three votes, 317-314. 

When contacted by the River News, Mahner said he won’t challenge the results “because you’ve got to trust the system, right?”

“I’m not sure many results have ever been overturned with a recount,” he said. “I feel we just have to trust the system. I’m going to accept the results as they are.”

Mahner, also the fire chief for the town’s volunteer fire department, said despite the loss, he intends to stay informed about the county board’s activities.

“I still intend to be the voice of the people,” he said. “There’s 314 people who trusted me so I’ll keep fighting the good fight for them.”

In District 9, covering wards 1 and 4 in Pine Lake, Wayne Kulhanek lost his bid to stay on the county board to Mary Roth Burns by a count of 271-224.

Kulhanek was appointed to the county board last year following the resignation of Dianna Harris.

In the District 12 race, incumbent Mitchell Ives lost his bid for re-election. Challenger Kyle Kilbourn finished with 355 votes to 212 for Ives.

Hanus, who going into the election occupied the county board’s District 2 seat, didn’t run for re-election to the county board. In a registered write-in contest for that seat, Sandy Hamburg defeated Joshua Raith, 28-5.

Steve Schrieier also did not seek re-election to the District 4 seat and will be succeeded by Andrea Sheppard, who was unopposed and finished with 250 votes.