Majority of Starke Commissioners, Council Republican for First Time in Decades

For the first time in several decades, the majority of both the Starke County Commissioners and the Starke County Council are republican, but how much does that really matter? Republican Kent Danford beat out Democrat Dan Bridegroom for a seat on the Board of County Commissioners, and the lone democrat commissioner, Jennifer Davis, said it’s going to be a bit different but they’ll work together to improve the county as best they can.

“We’ve always had the two democrats since I’ve been a commissioner, and Kathy Norem of course is a republican; now we’ll have two republicans and a democrat, and I say that we are going to miss Dan and all that he brought to the table. He really was a hard-working commissioner and did a great job for us, but I’m sure that Kent – he is a veteran commissioner, he’s actually returning, he served as commissioner before – will do a great job too,” Davis said.

Fortunately, party politics will likely be pushed to the back-burner as the commissioners focus on what’s already on their plates. With massive projects underway like the construction of a new county jail, Davis said they’ll get right down to work.

“We have a lot of projects in the works, and I know that we’ll all hit the ground running with Kent and I look forward to working with him, and we are surely going to miss Dan,” said Davis.

With the commissioners staying so busy, Davis said the shift in power from democrats to republicans on the board of county commissioners probably won’t have much of an effect at all.

“As far as democrat and republican, I don’t think it really makes a whole lot of difference because I think that we’re all working on so many things right now to take the county forward that we just work together as a team,” said Davis.