Challenge To 1 Ballot Keeps Mayor’s Race In Limbo

The man who calls himself the “sheik of Springdale,” Dawud Ahmad Abdur-Rahman, has tied the Springdale municipal election in knots with a last-minute challenge that has confounded officials.

On the day after the Nov. 4 election, Ahmad challenged the absentee ballot of Don Wilma. That still-uncounted ballot could be the deciding factor in the Town Council race between Lowell Peterson and Vickie Denman and, indirectly, in Dan Hite’s one-vote mayoral victory over Floyd Pope.

Stevens County Auditor Tim Gray worried Thursday how the ballot dispute can be resolved without revealing how Wilma voted, but Wilma figures everyone in Springdale already knows: “It would be a tie for the mayorship if my vote were counted.”

A name would be drawn from a hat to determine who is mayor, but Vickie Denman would have a one-vote victory over Peterson, who supports Hite.

The county election canvassing board ruled Wednesday that Wilma wasn’t entitled to vote in the Springdale election because a judge recently said the annexation that brought Wilma’s home within city limits was invalid.

Wilma said he will challenge the canvassing board’s decision. He contends the board jumped the gun because Superior Court Judge Rebecca Baker still hasn’t signed an order implementing her opinion on the annexation.

Baker said the 80-acre annexation area is outside the town’s interim growth area under the state Growth Management Act. Wilma said county officials haven’t yet designated a growth area for Springdale.

He said he plans to challenge Baker’s decision, which could reinstate the annexation and his ballot.

Wilma said the porch of the house he lives in with his brother and sister-in-law, Al and Saundra Wilma, is inside the city even without the annexation. But the porch isn’t enough, Gray said Thursday.

Gray said Ahmad showed up at the polls about 20 minutes after they opened to challenge Al and Saundra Wilma’s votes, but the couple had already voted. Once the ballots were cast, there was no way to retrieve them.

As he often has been in the past, Springdale Marshal Jerry Taylor is the focus of the town’s newest political tangle. Hite dislikes Taylor and, as mayor, would have authority to fire him.

“The issue is who controls law and order in Springdale,” Al Wilma said. “Is it going to be the barkeeps or the people who want to enforce the law? A lot of those (pro-Hite) people don’t like Marshal Taylor, and the reason they don’t like him is that he enforces the law.”

Wilma believes the court case against the annexation of his family’s 80-acre property in April was a “smoke screen” for the law-enforcement issue. New houses in the annexation area would bring new residents who favor Taylor’s brand of law enforcement.

Until recently, Ahmad - who identifies himself as an Islamic spiritual leader - has been one of Taylor’s supporters. That changed in August when Taylor arrested Ahmad’s 21-year-old son, Jamal ibn Dawud, on a charge of second-degree negligent driving.

Ahmad contends his son was trying to prevent a kidnapping, and Taylor abused his power.

, DataTimes