Kurt Vialet Tops Senate Race

Meet St. Croix Senator Kurt Vialet–the first-time Democratic senator who garnered the lion share of the senatorial vote in Tuesday’s General Election.

With 11 of 16 precincts reporting at the time of this story, which is 68.75 percent completed, Vialet’s victory is secured.

From the start of polling results being made available to the public after 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, Vialet topped the list of senatorial candidates and continued to hold steady as the results were periodically updated into the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

The VI Consortium caught up with Vialet at the Virgin Islands Elections System office on election night, where he said he was “very pleased” and “overwhelmed” by the support he had received from the people of St. Croix.

Dressed casually in a campaign t-shirt and jeans, an outfit rainy weather that had swept across the region throughout the day and well into the night, Vialet vowed to “look out for St. Croix” and “represent the people of St. Croix to show what a gem St. Croix really is,” he said.

When asked about his thoughts on the 2014 election cycle, which has been replete with challenges ranging from voting machine issues to correctly recording write-in candidate names, Vialet said its been “quite difficult.”

He went on to say it was “a shame that we have spent over $100,000 on the new machines,” but that the challenges voters faced with not being able to verify their own votes has set residents “20 years backwards.”

Vialet added that he believes the percentage of spoiled ballots in the General Election will top the number of those that were spoiled during the Democratic Primary Elections on Aug. 2.

When asked what his first order of business will be when he takes the oath of office, Vialet said, “Even before the first day, I will first try to develop consensus with the other six Senators that were elected.”

“If we can’t work together and show a united front,” Vialet said, it would be impossible for them to make any real change happen for St. Croix.

After developing consensus with his colleagues, Vialet pointed out he would then work on decreasing the high cost of energy and then work to establish long term and short term growth for St. Croix.