Fox wins Chairman’s seat
Grady, Halvorson winners in area races
By Jerry W. Kram
Mark Fox will be the next Chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes, defeating Damon Williams 53 percent to 47 percent in the tribal election held Tuesday.
That is the biggest news coming out of this weeks North Dakota General Election. Mountrail County reflected statewide trends that saw a Republican sweep of statewide offices and seven of eight ballot measures defeated. Almost all local races saw incumbents running unopposed. An exception was the Mountrail County Sheriff’s race that saw incumbent Ken Halvorson trounce Cody Smith.
In the only other race on the tribal election ballot, Frank Grady defeated Vonnie Jo Alberts with a vote of 245 to 100. Two other segment representative positions were up for a vote this year, but Mervin Packineau in Parshall and Cory Spotted Bear in Twin Buttes both won seats by getting more than 50 percent of the vote in the June Primary Election.
A capacity crowd in the the 4 Bears Event Center waited patiently for results to come in from the six segments of the Fort Berthold Reservation. Williams took an early 30 vote lead with the initial results from the Four Bears Segment. However, the second batch of votes from North Segment, which includes New Town, gave Fox a 100 vote lead that he wouldn’t relinquish for the rest of the evening. In the end, Williams won just the Four Bears and Mandaree segments while Fox won New Town, Parshall, White Shield and Twins Buttes. The final tally of votes was 1,240 for Fox and 1,094 for Williams.
