By JAMES BELL
Hays Post
PHILLIPSBURG – With a full house watching, Republican precinct leaders in the 110th District chose a replacement to serve the remaining term of former state Rep. Travis Couture-Lovelady, who resigned his seat to take a job with the National Rifle Association late last month.
After the final vote was counted, Ken Rahjes took the majority vote 33-24, winning the seat. Rahjes, an Agra native, relocated to the 110th District from Nebraska to pursue the seat.
“I want to thank the voters in the 110th, the majority gave me the opportunity now to represent them in the House,” he said after Thursday night’s meeting.
But after the warm thank you to the room, Rahjes seemed to want to jump right in and get to work — the very thing he promised during the meeting.
“We still have to continue to defend our Second Amendment rights, we have to continue to work out our tax issues, that the three-legged stool continues to be fair and through those we can adequately fund education and other services and we need to make sure that we are not putting the heaviest of burdens on our local government units,” he said.
When asked during the meeting what committee he might want to serve on, Rahjes said the Tax Committee might be a good fit.
After the meeting, he expanded on his message of keeping jobs in the area.
Rahjes said he hopes education can be funded to allow students the opportunity to move back to the rural areas after college and said agriculture and the energy industry are also priorities for him.
He said “we’ve got to do something to make sure good jobs in those fields find a voice in the Legislature–would help find ways to keep workers in those industries working.”
Thirty seven delegates, with an attached 20 proxy votes, nominated three people during the meeting — Rahjes, Don Steeples, Palco mayor and Robert Pinkerton, Phillips County Republican Party chairman.
In first-round voting, Pinkerton had 23 of the 57 votes available, Rahjes carried 28 and Steeples carried 6.
With no majority being obtained, Steeples was dropped from the ticket.
In the second vote, Rahjes carried 33 votes and Pinkerton carried 24.