The citizens of Silver Lake will soon have a new mayor — sort of.
Earning 59.4 percent of the votes, 38.5 percentage points more than his closest challenger, Bruce Bebo was elected the city’s mayor. What’s really impressive about the win, though, was that he did it with a write-in campaign.
“I was totally surprised, and call it humbled, by the margin,” Bebo said of the results. “The overwhelming support, you don’t usually see that in a write-in.”
Bebo had some things going for him, such as name recognition. He had served as mayor for 16 years until he was defeated in 2018 by Silver Lake’s current mayor, Dorothy Butler.
After the loss, he wasn’t planning to run again. That changed in August when the council, by a split vote, decided to dissolve the Silver Lake Police Department and contract with the McLeod County Sheriff’s Office. That’s when Bebo, who was part of a petition to keep the city's police department, was approached to run for his old seat.
“Frustration of the people in the city,” Bebo said about why he ran a write-in campaign. “Nothing negative that I’m going to say on my part, but that was basically why they came to me.”
According to Bebo, it wasn’t just the council’s decision to dissolve the police department that upset residents. He said they felt they weren’t being heard or given a chance to speak about their concerns at council meetings.
“There was a petition run to keep the PD, and that basically fell on deaf ears,” Bebo said. “And in the same meeting ... they rushed to a decision to contract with the county. And that was a hot topic, it really was. People were frustrated about it.
“The thing about city government is, people say it moves too slow,” he added. “The thing about it is, from experience, there’s a reason for that. You have to explain it to people, take your time and tell them why you’re doing something. And you can’t rush into things.”
With Bebo set to return as mayor, one thing he made clear he won’t try to do is back out of the city’s current law enforcement contract with the county. But, he said, it’s an issue that will be scrutinized before signing a new contract.
“This council signed a contract with the county for a year. I was part of the petition to not get rid of (Silver Lake police), but I’m also open-minded enough to let it run its course for the year," he said. "If it’s better for the city, great. If it’s not, it needs to be revisited.”
The issue of law enforcement has been a controversial one for this small city on State Highway 7, and Bebo believes it has divided members of the council, as well as Silver Lake residents themselves. As he prepares to be sworn into office, he sees reuniting the community, and reopening the lines of communication between residents and their elected officials, as his top duties.
“When you start getting division (in the council), that trickles down. Pretty soon the people in town are taking sides. So that’s my goal, to try to unify the council first, and the city, to get as much as possible all on one page,” Bebo said. “You’re always going to have issues that people don’t agree on, and that’s good.”
