When I went to bed last night, the Cherokee website had Chad Smith leading by a considerable margin, so I figured at that point that he was probably going to take the election. Then, I woke up this morning to this:<\/p>\n
Smith received 7,974 votes, or 59% of the vote, beating challenger Stacy Leeds, who received 5,593 votes, or 41%.<\/p>\n
The race for Deputy Chief saw incumbent Joe Grayson, Jr. defeating Raymond Vann. Grayson received 8,230 votes, 61% of the total cast. Vann finished with 5,205 votes, or 39%.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
They also have the results for all of the districts and the at large representatives<\/a>\u00a0on the Cherokee Nation website.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think Stacy Leeds was fighting an uphill battle against Chad Smith’s $$$$$.\u00a0 The fact that he is an incumbent, didn’t help either,\u00a0but she fought fairly, and she tried to look out for the best interest of all of the Cherokee people.<\/p>\n
I am fairly certain there will be a challenge to the proposed Constitutional Amendment, since it was introduced so late that many people didn’t even get it on their absentee ballots.\u00a0 This is the Amendment that would make it so that the\u00a0federal government will not\u00a0be part of the approval process for the Cherokee Constitution.\u00a0 I don’t know how the Bureau of Indian Affairs is going to react to this, but I would think they are not going to be happy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then, we have this bill floating around Congress to defund the Cherokee Nation.\u00a0 I have no idea where that will go.\u00a0 Paul pointed me to a letter from the BIA<\/a>, saying that they do not have any plans to cut funding based on the Freedmen lawsuit, unless a federal court or the Congress directs them to do so.<\/p>\n
What does this mean for the Cherokee people?\u00a0 What does it mean for Black Cherokees and more specifically the descendants of the Freedmen?\u00a0 I have no idea, but I will continue to watch this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I went to bed last night, the Cherokee website had Chad Smith leading by a considerable margin, so I figured at that point that he was probably going to take the election. Then, I woke up this morning to … Continue reading