A Clean Slate

Now that Election Day is finally upon us, and I do not have an opponent on the ballot, I am looking forward to assuming my duties as state's attorney on December 1st. Since there has been talk all along about a write-in campaign, I have of necessity been hesitant to assume anything. I don't want to count my chickens before they're hatched, but at the same time December 1st is only a month away, and there is lots of work to be done in the transition from Rod Wolf's administration. So I decided that it was time to go ahead and start this blog, which I hope will be an effective way to communicate with the public about the state's attorney's office, and for the people to communicate with us.

I anticipate that we will have links to forms and other useful resources, and I'm certainly open to suggestions. Send email messages to david@cdavidnelson.com.

Pre-election press release

The following press release was provided to the Daily Register and Radio Station WEBQ on Friday:

David Nelson, the Democratic nominee for Saline County state’s attorney, released the following statement Friday, October 29:

I attended the county board meeting Thursday night at which the budgets of the state’s attorney’s office, and other county offices, were the main topic of discussion.

In anticipation of my election and assuming office on December 1st, I thought this might be an appropriate time for me to share some positive information with Saline County taxpayers.

There has been a tradition over the years, in Saline County and elsewhere, for officeholders to hire their spouses and other relatives. Public service has been very good to me and my family over the years. Knowing of the financial constraints the county is operating under, my wife Mona has volunteered to bring her considerable experience to the state’s attorney’s office, without pay.

She will be a tremendous asset to the office and to the county. Many of you are familiar with her work when she was the executive director of the housing authority. Probably fewer are aware that she was a judicial secretary for the late appellate court Justice Peyton Kunce, as well as having been a legal secretary for former U.S. attorney W. Charles Grace when he was public defender of Jackson County. She also served as a secretary for me and my former law partner, Bruce Stewart, now the presiding judge here in Saline County.

I expect that Mona’s primary responsibilities will be to serve as a liaison between the state’s attorney’s office and community social agencies, especially as regards children and the elderly. She has also volunteered to take over Phyllis Ferrell’s function as delinquent fines specialist.

I will be announcing other plans for the office after next Tuesday’s election.

Update: The Register ran the gist of the release on Saturday's front page, under the headline (in the print edition) "Salary of David Nelson's first employee a boost to county's budget." (For some reason, the editors chose to change my word constraints to restraints. No big deal, I was just brought up to think that whatever was within quotation marks was supposed to be what the person quoted actually said or wrote, verbatim.)