10/20/23, Watch or Listen time is 2:49.
Six candidates survived the come one come all non-partisan primary that was tallied on September 5. As far as I can tell the results appear roughly proportional to the number and size of signs we saw displayed.
Jeff Lambson, an incumbent, surely has the most and largest signs out there, and he got about 7,000 votes out of about 13,000 ballots which is around 28 % of Orem's registered voters. He was followed closely in the totals by Jenn Gale and Chris Killpack, which likely makes those three the likely winners of the upcoming general election, for which mail in ballots will be tallied on November 21.
Notably, Lambson, Gale, and Killpack have adopted a "shared sign" strategy when it comes to Spanish speaking voters. Those signs, in Spanish, are found all around Orem now, listing all three candidates.
The three next candidates that survived the primary are Crystal Muhlestein, Matt McKell, and Spencer Rands, each receiving around 4,000 votes. There was then a pretty large gap in vote totals for the remaining six candidates.
This reporter attended the meet the candidates night that was held in August at Orem's city hall. All of the candidates seemed like very nice people, and all seemed to have very similar stands on the major issue, as they claimed to be against high density development, even as some have apparently been accused of supporting it. Given their so similar stances on that major issue, perhaps number and size of signs is as good a way as any to determine your vote?
Here at Orem's Good News Paper, we don't believe that for a moment. That's why we are reaching out to all the six remaining candidates to see if we can do an in depth interview with each of them, that can be posted before the voting deadline.
We encourage you to visit the City website and view the candidates bios and watch the videos of questions answered from city staff.
But we are hoping that this publication can play a key future role in going deep with every candidate for every Orem election.
Let's have our own discussion about this election right here in our Youtuve comments section now.