Construction Backed Candidate, Pharmacist, Former Brewer and Man with Wolf Dragon Profile Picture Vie for Reno's Ward 2 Seat
While Naomi Duerr is being termed out, four candidates are vying to replace her for the Reno City Council Ward 2 seat representing southwest Reno, a developer favored candidate, a former brewer, a pharmacist, and a local whose Facebook has a blue wolf dragon as a profile picture, with only one of them, Summer Pellett, listed so far as getting campaign contributions
Pellett also has recent social media promoting the controversial and polarizing figure Karma Box founder Grant Denton. A former Sparks city planner, she writes she then ran an Esty shop before being appointed to the Storey County Planning Commission and then taking ownership with her husband of a family construction company. Her contributions report from January had her receiving nearly $90,000 already, with many construction companies and the AGC PAC giving her big checks.
"I’ll prioritize cleaning up downtown to attract residents, businesses, visitors, and investors, creating a vibrant, safe, and financially strong community," she writes in a section of her website called Elevating the Reno Experience.
“Reno is my place. Service is my story,” Matt Johnson writes on his own campaign website.
He started out working with AmeriCorps before pivoting full time to running Imbib Custom Brews which closed both its locations last year.
The important issues he lists on his website include city budget, cost of living, sense of place, non profit and small business support and transparency and trust.
Another is having a cycling and pedestrian friendly town for which he writes: “With an average walk score of 40, bike score of 52, and transit score of 24 (according to walkscore(dot)com), Reno has room to improve. Anyone who gets around primarily by foot, bike, or transit knows this. I will always be the advocate for improving on these metrics as the City Council makes development decisions. These improvements are critical to safety and quality of life and they will be assets that will ultimately attract people to Reno.”
On her website, Vanessa Vaupel calls herself a pharmacist, a problem solver, and someone who has spent her career pushing "for “yes” when it mattered most,” including during the pandemic era what she details as fighting for newly-available COVID vaccines during a meeting at the VA hospital.
“I stood up. And I said: yes, we can,” she writes. “As it usually goes, when you speak up, you get assigned the duty to lead, and lead I did. With evidence, solutions, and a plan. We launched one of the most successful vaccine campaigns in the entire VA system, becoming the fourth highest vaccinating VA in the country.”
Vaupel also describes herself as a Girl Scout mom.
We couldn’t find any website for Ian Luetkehans. A Facebook with his name and a Reno location has a mythical wolf-dragon hybrid creature as the profile picture. In an interview while running as a Democrat for the northern Nevada congressional seat in the 2020 cycle he said he was running against corruption and for people struggling with disabilities, saying he is autistic. He finished last in the primary then getting 338 votes. He ran in the Republican primary for that same office in 2018 also finishing last, getting 882 votes then.
The four are vying to replace Duerr who has been a polite presence on an often rambunctious council since winning the seat in 2014, always looking into details, sometimes hemming and hawing and pushing back certain votes, but usually ending up voting with the pro developer majority, which has approved major projects while motels were torn down, traffic all around our area worsens and downtown Reno remains stuck in a certain limbo.
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