Laurel man wins primary election, ready to serve on county commission

HARTINGTON – Mike Meier is ready to serve the citizens of Cedar County.

The Laurel businessman defeated Randolph area farmer John Thelen for a chance to take over the county board of commissioners seat being vacated by Craig Bartels, Belden, at the end of 2024. “I was happy to see that I won,” Meier said in a follow-up interview. “Now the people spoke and they got what they wanted.” Meier defeated Thelen by a total of 638 votes to 161 votes, according to the unofficial results from the county clerk’s office for the May 14 primary election. “I just wish Mike all the best,” Thelen said in a follow-up interview.

Both Meier and Thelen are Republicans, so they faced off in the primary election for the District 2 commissioner seat. No one filed for the position as a Democrat, so unless Meier faces a write-in challenger in the Nov. 5 general election, he will take over the commissioner seat in January. This is the second time Thelen filed to run for the commissioner seat. He challenged Bartels in the 2020 primary election. Bartels originally filed for re-election to the position, but then decided he did not wish to run for a third four-year term. He is in the final year of his second term as a commissioner.

Bartels also is the only member of the three-person county board with an expiring term that will conclude at the end of 2024. District 2 covers all of the southern part of the county, including the communities of Belden, Coleridge, Laurel, Magnet and Randolph. Meier, who owns Laurel Welding, noted he wants people to know he is approachable. “If they’ve got an issue, I’m more than happy to talk to them,” Meier said. “That’s how you resolve it. I can’t see every single mile. They’re going to have to be part of it, too.”

Meier expressed his gratitude for the people who voted for him. “We’ll do what we can do to improve Cedar County,” Meier said. In related news, County Clerk Jessica Schmit noted District 2’s voter turnout for the commissioner race was 62.42 percent, with 799 ballots cast out of 1,280 registered district voters. Schmit added the county’s voter turnout for this year’s primary election was 50.89 percent, with 2,892 ballots cast out of 5,683 registered voters in the county, which sends out ballots by mail only and does not have physical polling places.

That percentage is lower than the previous two primary elections held in the county, which saw a voter turnout of about 57 percent in 2020, a presidential election year like 2024, and about 53 percent in 2022.

Reflecting on the fact this year’s primary election was the first she has overseen as the county clerk, Schmit said, “It went well. I thought that we might have a little bit higher percentage turnout.”