Kind of an interesting primary last night. Some people I was cheering for won. Some people didn’t.
I think the number of people dividing up the vote in some of these races affected things. I think the quality of candidates mattered as much if not more than anything. I don’t know that the massive amounts of money pouring in from out of state did anything other than burn bridges for the next legislative session.
Speaking of the cash dumped in by Convention of States.. They targeted five candidates. Michael Rohl, Lee Schoenbeck, Tim Reed, Mary Duvall, and David Johnson. The only one of them who lost was Mary in the narrow contest between her and former Pierre City Commissioner Jim Mehlhaff. The rest just shellacked the poor to mediocre competition.
- Michael Rohl was out there first and never let up, when his opponent didn’t seem to get active until the end. He won 71-29%
- Lee Schoenbeck had an absolute fusillade of fertilizer thrown at him from every angle, whether true or not. His opponent could barely seem to spell legislature. Lee for the win, 59-41%.
- Tim Reed had the COS just making stuff up that was woven from pure insinuation. He smashed the nobody running against him 60-40%
- David Johnson defeated return legislative spouse Janet Jensen 57-43%. Nobody was looking for another Jensen last election, and they still aren’t.
In other words, if you put money behind a known candidate, you might be able to fight it to darn near even. But if your candidate is not up to par, so shall be your results.
Other interesting observations from last night? When faced with a lot of choices, people didn’t seem interested in wholesale change, but were more aiming down the middle, and there were a lot of close races.
In District 3 House, Carl Perry won, but in the competition for second place, there were less than 65 votes between Brandei Schaefbauer (2nd place) and Richard Rylance (3rd place). Same thing in Brookings. Mellissa Heermann 1280, Roger Degroot 1245, and Doug Post 1184. 61 votes between 2nd and 3rd. District 12 House – 13 votes between second and third. District 20 has 120 votes between 2 and 3. District 29 32 votes between 2 and 3.
In what might be the heartbreak of the evening, Julie Frye-Mueller, was almost taken out in a race separating that trainwreck from her opponent Tim Goodwin on a vote of 2848-2802, only 46 votes, within recount range. We’ll have to wait for the canvas to see if anything drastic changes. But, we handily kept Bryan Breitling in the Senate, and picked up Steve Kolbeck.
I don’t know that anyone can say there was a conservative surge or backlash, as much as there was a re-jumbling in the spirit of re-districting. Arch-conservative Fred Deutsch returned, but came in alongside Kristi Noem ally Stephanie Sauder. John Mills returned, but came in a distant second to former Cabinet official Tim Reisch.
When it comes down to it, I think it’s based mainly on the quality of the candidates, and the quality of the campaign they ran.
From reports, I think door to door campaigning is back, and candidates better make sure they’re doing it if they want to be competitive.
I’ll be picking these apart all day.. stay tuned.
Dix lost to Novstrup, that’s got to sting a bit for a certain somebody.
Brandei Schaefbauer another anti-vaxxer elected.
Surprised the Wieses although losing got as many votes as they did.
Champion for deadbeat dads Pishke won.
Yes, but his clone didn’t get 10%.
Clone? Who is that?
Spelled last name wrong Weis but Weises Kaleb/Kayla lost.
One would wonder if some of that tainted crazy water from the Black Hills District 30 area contaminated the Hub City region. More crazies and radicals got elected.
Glad Fouberg got in for sanity’s sake.
“Champion for deadbeat dads Pishke won”. Stay classy anonymous. Glad someone actually supports children(s) rights.
Dustin Letcher, there is nothing classy about wanting to weasel out of child support payments. The purpose of child support enforcement is to keep dependent children off of public assistance. Nobody cares how much time they spend with either parent, nobody cares what one parent spends on them in one household if they are on public assistance in the other. Child support isn’t about children’s rights, it isn’t about parental rights, it’s about the taxpayers’ rights. It isn’t supposed to be fair to the adults who have made a mess of their children’s lives; it’s supposed to be fair to all the empty-nest taxpayers who don’t want to support your kids for you.
Complaining that child support isn’t “fair” to the parent who is ordered to pay it is a specious argument. It is not a punishment for the parent who pays it nor a reward for the parent who receives it. Its sole purpose to to keep dependent children off public assistance.
Many years ago, child support enforcement became a federal matter because too many deadbeat dads moved across state lines and didn’t pay. It was considered a civil matter between the parents and required the parent who was supposed to get the money to use her own resources to collect on the debt. For most single mothers it was easier to apply for public assistance. When the cost of that came to the attention of the public, it was obvious that changes needed to be made. At no time did anybody give a damn about how much time the kids got to spend with their fathers, The deadbeat dads have been complaining about how “unfair” that is ever since. We still don’t care that you don’t think it’s fair. Pay up.
To add to your list of what child support is to be or isn’t to be I would like to add one more….child support shouldn’t be used to pay for the new boyfriends boat…or do you think that’s ok?
And that is exactly what has been determined to annoy the dads who pay child support the most: that they don’t have any control over how the money is spent.
Too bad.
We don’t care. As long as the mother isn’t applying for benefits we don’t care what she does with the money.
And if she’s not paying for the school lunches with it, the schools need to submit the bills for the unpaid lunches to the office of child support enforcement. That office can reimburse the school district and send mom what’s left over.
To anonymous:
You seem to be “well versed” on child support, but I’m curious how much child support have you personally paid?
I have been on the receiving end of child support, back in the days when the child’s father simply mailed a check to the mother, and that was it.
My ex paid every month and I was astonished to learn how many other single moms never got a dime. My friends told me how their exes never paid, they were all living in low income housing and receiving welfare benefits. My friends were surprised to learn I had an ex-husband who actually paid when there was no agency in place to make him do it.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t know what I would have been able to do about it if he had just stopped paying.
Now child support checks are mailed to Pierre and the money is forwarded on to the parent who is supposed to get it. The state knows immediately when a parent doesn’t pay, and they go after him. The state doesn’t care what the recipient does with the money, and the Mad Dads have been complaining ever since. They can no longer refuse to pay child support because the moms don’t spend it as they think it should be spent, or they don’t get to spend enough time with the kid, or they spent it all taking the kid on a vacation. Nobody in the office of child support enforcement cares.
My sister married a deadbeat dad. After college football he was not responsible at all never making child support payments. He did not take life seriously. She is very independent, responsible and has a strong work ethic but had to reluctantly seek help from the goverment for a while until she moved back to the city our family resides. Our parents helped her with housing and she finally gave up on getting child support payments from this deadbeat dad living in another state. She reached a legal agreement with the father where he gave up any legal rights given he had no intention of making payments to support their child. He would of been a terrible example of a parent anyways.
Not a fan of deadbeat dads especially buy wants vs needs and not supporting kids. These guys are trying to get away with being responsible and accountable.
She was and is a fantastic mother and my nephew grew up to be well respected and is doing well for himself.
I am stating children deserve to have both parents. Not once I mention child support. I could honestly care less how much I or the other person pays. I just care that children have access to both parents and to keep the courts out of those situations.
Amendment C getting throttled like it did proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, what we learned from Amendment A’s passage: the SD Republican establishment DOES NOT accurately or adequately represent South Dakota Republican voters.
Lee et al, you should be ashamed. Do better.
Yet people in this state keep voting for them. They don’t represent your interests! Stop electing them! Baffling.
The complete loss by Amendment C was somewhat of a surprise to me.
I expected it to lose, but I thought it would be closer. I expected it to be within a few percentage points, honestly.
The state legislature did everything they could to stack the deck in favor of it winning:
1) Putting it in the primary election where the vast majority of voters were Republican Primary Voters who tend to be more conservative than the average Republican Party member at large.
2) Doing it in a year where there wasn’t any Democratic Party Primary so the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party had no reason to come out to vote…this SHOULD have been the best time for this to win.
And it still lost. It lost state-wide. Even if every Democrat and Non-Party ballot was thrown out, it STILL lost.
Let’s pretend that all 62568 non-Republican votes were all NO votes. We know that isn’t the case, but that’s where the math is easier and more favorable to the Yes on C crowd.
59,111 Yes votes to the 122,387 NO votes – 62568 non-Republicans gives us C losing 59,111 YES to 59,819 NO. And that is the mathematically BEST possible result for the Yes on C crowd.
They couldn’t even convince the more Conservative block of the Republican Party to support this bill.
Hopefully the state legislature learns from this. I don’t expect that they will, but hopefully they do.
Lee is incorrigible and pathologically arrogant. He will learn nothing from this. The best we can hope for is that legislators will stop following him.
Truth bomb 100%
Potheads are happy they can try to push thru recreational weed and that will result in large tax increases so Amendment C would have stopped that in it’s tracks unless out od stat pot would have poured even more money into the state to get it passed.
lol this is just nutz, first off I predict rec weed will have a harder road this time around as there will actually be an attempt to stop it now instead of letting the court do the work.
Amendment C was about stopping medicaid expansion this Fall not weed. duh
inevitably, Medicaid expansion will be passed, and when the legislature has to make cuts to education to pay for it, the names and addresses of all the people who signed those petitions should be released to the teachers so they will know which homes to target for retributive acts of violence.
Eventually the only way to pay for everything will be with a state income tax, and the half of the population which doesn’t pay income taxes will have no trouble at all voting for one.
There is no need for cuts to education. You are just stating scare tactics. Cuts to the governor’s travel and legal budget would be good choices.
jad: you haven’t looked at the state budget apparently. Education is the only other significant pool of money to be looked at for funding more welfare (medicaid). It will definitely (and painfully) come from there.
It was about stopping both Medicaid expansion and recreational weed my friend. BOTH will raise taxes.
Alright. Would you please educate me on how rec weed would raise taxes? Genuinely want to know. Thx
You’re delusional. Most real, actual voters, like your neighbors, want recreational marijuana. I’d bet it passes with over 60% support this fall. Especially after people turned out to vote down C.
However, if C would’ve passed it would’ve been challenged legally for the same reason A was thrown out and the State probably would’ve lost that fight. So by voting No we saved ourselves tax dollars. How bout that.
Weed taxes would only apply to weed buyers. Are you always this stupid or are you making a special effort today?
Yeah – Much like taxes on booze, concerts and entertainment, or any other USE tax on a non-essential item, it is a voluntary tax.
If you don’t want to pay the weed tax, DON’T SMOKE WEED.
It’s kind of like Video Lottery or PowerBall – I don’t want to pay those taxes, so I don’t.
You can’t complain about people who CHOOSE to give money to the state. It’s their money, they can do what they want with it.
As America’s Governor Noem has correctly stated Marijuana especially recreational Marijuaana will GROW GOVERMENT and indeed it will. Support services wich includes social services will grow and all kids of problems will grow which taxpayers will be left on the hook for. Costs substantially exceed any revenue from pot related sales. Those pushing pot never mention costs.
That’s just the cost of freeedom baby!
addiction treatment, homelessness, increased mental health provider demands. Turning South Dakota into Colrado and the west coast cities with homelessness and crime. Yep! FreeDumb!
So…campaign against it.
Convince people that it is a bad idea. Convince enough voters to show up and vote against it.
If you don’t like an initiate measure, convince more people to vote against it than the number of people who will vote for it. That’s KIND OF a bedrock principle of this democratic Republic that we live in. (democratic with a small d – as in elections are held by the people with the majority winning)
If your ideas are better CONVINCE PEOPLE.
If you can’t convince the people of SOUTH DAKOTA – one of the most conservative states in the nation by a ways – that they should vote down the medicaid expansion and legal weed then that is on YOU.
Just like if you couldn’t convince even the majority of the REPUBLICAN PARTY to vote yes on C, that is AGAIN on you.
The problem is the Republican Party in this state has had power for so long unopposed by anything except the rest of the Republican Party they have forgotten how to convince people that their ideas might be better. They have forgotten how to convince people that don’t agree with them to change their minds.