Hurd beats Voss in 69th GOP primary
By Kevin O’Brien
With 57 percent of the ballots cast in her favor, Rep. Karen Hurd defeated former Abbotsford mayor Lori Voss in Tuesday’s Republican primary for the newly redrawn 69th Assembly District.
Hurd earned a total of 3,892 votes, compared to 2,909 for Voss. As a result of Tuesday’s election, Hurd will face Democrat Roger Halls of Stanley in the Nov. 5 general election.
The 69th is currently represented by Rep. Donna Rozar (RMarshfield), but she was drawn out of the district’s new boundaries after a redistricting bill was signed into law earlier this year. Rozar ran in Tuesday’s Republican primary in the neighboring 86th Assembly District, but lost to incumbent Rep. John Spiros, also of Marshfield.
Prior to Tuesday’s primary, Hurd was elected in 2022 to represent the 68th Assembly District, but she decided to move from Fall Creek in Chippewa County to the town of Withee in Clark County so that she could run in the open 69th Assembly District. Her current two-year term as the 68th’s representative will end at the start of 2025, when she begins her first term in
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Karen Hurd Elections
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the 69th.
Voss, who previously served as Abbotsford’s mayor and was also a member of the city council, performed well in the Abbotsford-Colby area, but it wasn’t enough to overcome Hurd’s lead in Medford and greater Clark County.
Clark County, which is now completely contained within the boundaries of the 69th, went for Hurd over Voss, 2,442 to 1,451, with Hurd winning a majority of the vote in all but six of the county’s 50 municipalities. Besides earning the most votes in the cities of Abbotsford and Colby, Voss won majorities in the nearby towns of Colby, Unity, Green Grove and Mayville.
Voss also had a strong showing in rural Marathon County, winning majorities in the towns of Bern, Brighton, Frankfort, Halsey, Holton, Hull, Johnson, Rietbrock, and in the village of Athens.
However, Hurd won the Taylor County portion of the district, 757 to 641. Besides beating Voss in Medford, 259 to 145, and in Stetsonville, 45 to 24, Hurd won majorities in the towns of Deer Creek and Goodrich.
Other results
In Marathon County, county clerk Kim Trueblood and county treasurer Connie Beyersforf both fended off their respective challengers in Tuesday’s Republican primary.
Trueblood won her race the most decisively, earning 80 percent of the votes (12,721), compared to just 20 percent for Toshia Ranallo, an administrative assistant for Marathon County who earned 3,091 votes countywide.
Beyersdorf won her primary 66 percent of the vote (10,072), beating Jen Seliger, a town of Hamburg resident who previously served as town chairman and on the Merrill School Board.
No Democrats are running for clerk or treasurer, so Trueblood and Beyersdorf will be running unopposed in the Nov. 5 election.
In the statewide referendums that would have prohibited the governor from spending federal money without legislative approval, local voters were decidedly in favor of the measures, but overall, they failed to earn enough votes to pass.
Statewide, 58 percent of electors voted against Question #1 and 57 percent voted against Question #2.
In Marathon County, however, about 52 percent of voters cast ballots voted in favor of both questions. Of all the municipalities in western Marathon County, only one, the village of Edgar, voted in accordance with the rest of the state.
Likewise, elected in Clark County voted overwhelmingly in favor the ballot measures, with Question #1 earning about 57 percent support and Question #2 garnering just over 58 percent support.
