There was a flurry of candidates on Thursday filing to be candidates for Sioux City Council seats. Bret Hayworth brings us up to date…
After the final deluge of filing up to the deadline at 5 p.m, nine people are candidates for the three Sioux City Council seats that are going before voters.
That large crop of candidates now means there will be an extra primary election on Oct. 7, to reduce the field before the Nov.4 election.
Sioux City City Clerk Heidi Farrens was busy fielding nomination papers Thursday, as there were five candidates who filed over the prior three weeks. Four more came in on Thursday from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., to bring the total up to nine.
The final city council candidates filers were Brett Watchorn, Marty Pottebaum, Paul Koskovich, and Jessica Lopez-Walker, who is the sole woman in the field.
P0ttebaum served on the Sioux City Council in the 1990s and was also elected to the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors. Lopez-Walker is a community activist who unsuccessfully ran for the Iowa House in 2024.
‘Koskovich is a construction developer and Watchorn unsuccessfully ran for the council in 2017.
The other earlier-announced candidates are Ike Rayford, John Den Beste, Nick Davidson, Rick Bertrand, and Craig Bernstein are running for Sioux City Council.
Rayford held a Thursday morning press conference on his candidacy, sharing that he learned lessons from his 2021 run for the Sioux City Council that fell 66 votes short.
Den Beste is a financial advisor and Davidson unsuccessfully ran for the council in 2017.
Bertrand is a former state senator and Berenstein is a former mayor and councilman.
In an atypical twist, all three current council members are not seeking re-election. There was also a late -days element to the announcement decisions by the current councilmen that they would not run again, as Alex Watters, Dan Moore, and Matthew O’Kane all went public on Tuesday And Wednesday.
All three of the departing councilmen said they enjoyed serving the public. At the end of this year, Moore will exit the council after 12 years, with Watters serving eight years, and O’Kane with one four-year term.
“I will continue to advocate for the citizens of Sioux City, and I will vow to help hold local leaders accountable and ensure that elected officials are transparent with citizens," said O’Kane.
