My friend Ed Thompson was just elected mayor of Tomah, Wisconsin for the second time. Here’s the news release:

Charismatic Libertarian Ed Thompson won Tuesday’s mayoral election by nearly a two-to-one margin over incumbent Chuck Ludeking.

Speaking from his Tomah supper club, the Teepee, Thompson said he found about 50 dusty yard signs in a storage shed, leftovers from his previous campaign for mayor in 2000. He also dug up four highway signs from his Wisconsin gubernatorial campaign of 2002.

Thompson spent $10 for black and white paint to make appropriate changes to the highway signs. He said, “I paid my handyman, Terry Waddell, another $10 to clean up and paint the signs.”

Thompson referred to his frugal $20 campaign as a metaphor for how government should be run. In his previous term as mayor he cut city expenses by 13% while improving services to the community.

Thompson says that large expenditures should be decided in referendum by the people, not by a handful of city council members. “The people have been left out of the political process at all levels,” he said. “I want to change that.”

He went on to say, “We’re going to change government at the grassroots level. I want to show that libertarian values are American values, that we, the people, don’t want government bureaucracies meddling in our private lives.”

Thompson also serves as Vice-Chairman of the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin.

His 2002 Libertarian gubernatorial campaign made 3rd party history in Wisconsin when he got 10.5% of the vote with only about 2% of the total money spent on that election.

Thompson quipped, “Maybe I should run for governor again some day, but it would probably take more than 20 bucks, maybe more like a couple hundred.”