No Republicans File for Johnson County Offices

No Republicans File for Johnson County Offices
Democratic Incumbents Unopposed In Primary

In somewhat of a surprise, no Republicans filed for any of the five Johnson County courthouse offices before today's deadline. That in itself isn't unusual, but this year it looked like the Republicans would field candidates for supervisor.

Lori Cardella, the GOP nominee for supervisor in the January special election, publicly said immediately after her loss to Janelle Rettig that she intended to run again. Even before the appointment-petition-special election chain of events that began with Larry Meyers' death last September, Chad Murphy had announced on the GOP side. And there were also rumors that Edgar Thornton, who applied for the Board vacancy in October, was going to run.

Republicans can still nominate county candidates by convention through August 25; that's also the deadline for independent and third party candidates. (Same for state and federal stuff only the deadline's August 13.)

On the Democratic side the five incumbents - county attorney Janet Lyness, recorder Kim Painter, treasurer Tom Kriz, and supervisors Rettig and Sally Stutsman - will all run unopposed in the June 8 primary (and, so far, in November). This sets up an unusual Johnson County primary where Democrats have only federal and state offices to consider, which hasn't happened in at least 40 years (2002 had no Democratic contests at all).

The only county-wide Democratic contest is the U.S. Senate primary between Roxanne Conlin, Tom Fiegen and Bob Krause. House District 30 also has the primary between incumbent Dave Jacoby and challenger John Stellmach.

Local Republicans have the congressional race, several statewide contests including governor, and legislative primaries in the House 89/Senate 45 southern end of the county.