I guess we have it confirmed who the placeholders are in the Democrat Party. Because they’ve been dropping like flies, and making it look like there are even more seats that they didn’t bother to challenge with serious candidates.
Yesterday was the deadline to withdraw from the General Election by 5:00 pm local time. And withdraw they did. So far, we’ve had 1 Democrat dropping off the ballot in the Senate. Daniel Brandt dropped out in D19, giving Republican State Senator Kyle Schoenfish an unobstructed path to re-election.
And it got even crazier in the State House. In the House, so far 5 House Democrat candidates have said no-thank-you and withdrawn.
- Emily Meier dropped out in District 3 House, giving a clear path to Brandei Schaefbauer and Carl Perry.
- Travis Paulson dropped out in District 4, possibly giving Stephanie Sauder and Fred Deutsch unobstructed access to the legislature.
- In District 7, both Democrats – Lisa Johnsen and Mary Perpich abandoned ship, leaving the road to Pierre free and clear for Republicans Mellissa Heermann and Roger DeGroot.
- and in District 17, Paige Schroeder of Vermillion dropped it to a three-way race, meaning that at least one of the two Republicans (Chris Kassin or Bill Shorma) is guaranteed a seat, and they could easily take both against the remaining no-name Democrat, Rebecca Engquist-Schroeder.
This takes Democrats down to only challenging 11 of 35 Senate Seats – and that’s challenging, not winning. And challenging 33 of 70 House seats. In case you’d like to read the list, you can find it here.
Even if they replace a couple of the placeholders, those numbers are still abysmal. They’ve conceded 2/3 of the Senate Seats, and a majority of the House seats.
The process to replace candidates who have withdrawn is conducted under SDCL 12-6-56, giving Democrats until the second Tuesday in August (basically, Tuesday next week) to fill the slots.
So, we have to wait until next week to find out if they can talk someone into running, or if they’re going to let Carl Perry, Fred Deutsch and others pump their arms and announce their win 3 months ahead of November.
*Bonus Bad News for Democrats* – when I was pulling the numbers for the legislature, I note that there are only 136 Democrats running at any level in South Dakota, versus 433 Republicans on the ballot across the state this year, meaning less than 24% of the candidates on the ballot in South Dakota are Democrats.
Emily Meier and Paige Schroeder are both college kids. Guess they wanted to go back to running the corrupt student governments instead of getting their butt kicked in the general
Ya…..sometimes the real world isn’t the fantasy land some envision.
It looks like you and I found something to agree on, Pat. The SDDP is on life support, hanging on by a very frayed thread. There’s a reason I left it: they don’t have enough give-a-damn left to give a damn unless it’s for an executive or Federal office.
The far left is destroying the party, much like the far right is trying to do now to the Republicans. Most of us are moderates and we might find out sooner rather than later how strong we can be by coming together.
Meant to add more. I think most of these moderates are going to register Republican to have any sort of impact, which means even though we are a majority of Republicans you will see huge support for abortion rights, marijuana, and medicaid because those are all things a majority of the moderates support.
Essentially correct and well stated.
One would think this should be a sign to the SD Dems…their platform does not fit the values of a majority of South Dakotans.
Other than their fascination with legalizing more drugs not sure why the SDDP even exists anymore. The Bernie Bros destroyed it.