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Nov 7, 1934
HARTINGTON —Perfect weather, lack of usual farm corn picking and intense public interest all combined Tuesday to bring out the heaviest vote ever cast in Cedar County when 7,000 persons thronged to the polls in the off-year general election to give the Democrats a clean-sweep triumph for state offices, an even split on both national and state legislative positions and a six-to-four victory on county officials.
Tuesday’s total vote was more than 200 greater than the record-breaking vote cast in the 1932 Roosevelt-Hoover presidential election and nearly 1,000 more than the big August primary this year.
When the last precinct No. 16 at Coleridge was heard from early Wednesday, Democrats had won a majority in the courthouse for the first time in many years. and a bigger majority than they have had in the last quarter century.
In summary, the story is this: Democrats elected Clarence E. Haley, County Attorney incumbent; J.B. Larson, Laurel, County Clerk; W.P. Bisenius, Hartington, County Sheriff; Albert Mauch, Fordyce, north commissioner; F.H. Arens, Hartington, center commissioner; W.C. McNamera, Hartington, County Surveyor; unopposed inumbent.
Republicans elected: L.G. Riibe, County Treasurer, incumbent; Otto Wiley, clerk of District Court, incumbent; J.H. Edwards, Assessor, incumbent; Schuyler Wilson, Randolph, south Commissioner, incumbent. In brief the Democrats elected every new man elected to county office and both parties kept those running for re-election — with one exception. That being H.A. Schager, Republican County Clerk for 10 years and deputy and clerk for years and years before that. He received a drubbing at the hands of J.B. Larson, Laurel, a grain and livestock dealer.
The biggest surprise of the entire election was the overwhelming victory of John D. Reynolds, Knox County farmer, over State Senator J.P.
O’Furey, who was put up for a second term on the Democratic ticket.
O’Furey lost Cedar County by 1,108 votes, while Reynolds was piling up a majority of 1,538 in his own county. The Knox County vote: Reynolds, 4,374; O’Furey, 2,836.
State Rep. W.H. O’Gara of Laurel had a closer race than expected in his bid for re-election for an eighth term in the legislature when he defeated Oliver Seim, Hartington farmer, by only 637 votes.
Nov. 2, 1939
RANDOLPH — H.L Peck, 71 year-old pioneer northeast Nebraska newspaperman, retired Wednesday from more than 38 years at the helm of the Randolph Times Enterprise. Ill health caused the enforced retirement for the veteran editor who spent the major portion of his life in the newspaper field.
Nellwyn Moran, 32, son of Mr. and Mrs. E.R.
Moran of Hartington, purchased the Times-Enterprise from Peck.
Moran, whose first glimpse of the newspaper world came at the Cedar County News, has been associated with Peck for six years. After leaving the News, young Moran worked at the Sioux City Journal, the Wessington Springs (SD.) Times and with Fischer Printing of Sioux Falls, S.D.
