ALLEGAN COUNTY – Allegan County Board Chairman Jim Storey lost his seat Tuesday after a mail-in ballot campaign against his challenger Craig Van Beek failed.
Van Beek, a pastor and school board chairman in Hamilton, was the only name on the ballot in District 1, which includes parts of Holland, Fillmore Township, Laketown Township, Overisel Township and Salem Township.
Storey decided to run as a candidate after withdrawing his candidacy due to an unpaid state campaign finance report. He attempted to be re-listed but was unsuccessful.
Although the votes of voters who cast their ballots by hand have yet to be counted, Van Beek is the clear winner based on the total votes. According to unofficial results, he received 2,820 votes while only 612 electoral votes were cast.
Also on the Allegan County Board, incumbent Scott Beltman defeated primary challenger Bret Medemar in the fourth district with 67.3% of the vote.
No Democrat ran for election in either district in November.
New faces in Laketown Township
Meanwhile, a group of four candidates running together in Laketown Township were largely successful on Tuesday.
Tara Toner, Jim Delaney, Michael Koeman and Mark Timmerman campaigned together and three of them won their election; two of them ousted an incumbent. Delaney, currently a trustee, defeated incumbent Amber Davis in the election for secretary, and Koeman and Timmerman won the two available trustee seats, defeating incumbent Patrick Dietrich.
Delaney received 53.6% of the vote, edging out Davis (46.3%), who was running for election for the first time after being appointed in September 2022. Timmerman led the three trustee candidates with 955 votes, while Koeman received 880 votes and Dietrich, an incumbent seeking his first term after being appointed in August 2023, received 573 votes.
Steven Ringelberg defeated Toner and was nominated for Supervisor (incumbent Linda Howell did not seek re-election). Ringelberg received 728 votes, 51.6%, compared to 680 votes, 48.2%, for Toner.
In particular, the officer’s race led to tensions among district officials.
Manager Al Meshkin, who is retiring in December after 35 years, contradicted Delaney’s claims in his election mailings. Meshkin sent an email to Delaney and a Sentinel reporter on Saturday, July 27.
In his email with the subject line “This is nonsense,” Meshkin contradicted Delaney’s claim: “As a candidate for Secretary, I bring a wealth of knowledge and experience and work closely with the Assistant Secretary and Treasurer to approve checks and ensure smooth, fair elections.”
“Why are you spreading such lies?” Meshkin wrote in his email. “You, who always calls for transparency? When have you ever spoken more than five words to any of the deputy secretaries? You know you haven’t. You know absolutely nothing about the electoral process. What do you have a wealth of knowledge and experience in? It is certainly not governance. You should be ashamed of sending out such nonsense.”
For his part, Delaney said there was no intention to mislead anyone. He sent an email to The Sentinel saying the section of his campaign message that Meshkin took issue with was a typo.
“I addressed my error on our residents’ Facebook page,” he wrote. “I pointed out that the word ‘will’ was accidentally left out. I am not working with either the treasurer or the deputy clerk. I meant to say I ‘will work with them.'”
Treasurer Jim Johnson was able to retain his seat unopposed on Tuesday. There are no Democrats running for a seat in Laketown Township in November.
— Contact reporter Mitchell Boatman at [email protected].
This article originally appeared in the Holland Sentinel: Van Beek tops Storey write-in lists; Laketown council undergoes restructuring
