Author: @SoDakCampaigns

From Dakota News Now it looks like Meade County, South Dakota is the place to be if you’re so inclined to lift your girlfriend by the neck and shake her, as former newscaster Shad Olson was accused of doing:

The state was asking for a 180-day suspended jail sentence, and the judge gave Olson a suspended imposition of sentence.

Olson is required to attend anger management counseling, consent to search and seizure, consume no alcohol for the next 365 days, and have no contact with the victim or the victim’s address.

Read the entire story here

In case you’re forgetting the why of why Shad found himself being thrown in jail until a political ally paid his bail:

As alleged by the girlfriend who managed to escape, 8 years of abuse until his victim managed to escape the cycle of violence.

And it was not even worth the suspended jail sentence the prosecution had asked for.

KELOland is reporting that House Democrats in South Dakota are calling on Representative Logan Manhart to apologize over his “white boy summer” post on instagram.  (not to confuse it with his latest social media post defending white men.)

Manhart said in a now deleted Instagram post on July 4 “It’s white boy summer and the boys are back in charge.”

The South Dakota House Democratic Caucus sent a letter to Speaker of the House Jon Hansen and Majority Leader Scott Odenbach calling for Manhart to make a public apology.

“We are calling for Representative Manhart to issue a meaningful public apology —not a deflection, not a ‘sorry if you were offended,’ but a clear and direct acknowledgment of how his comment was wrong, who it hurt, and how he intends to grow from this moment,” the letter, signed by five Democratic state lawmakers said.

and..

“Dismissing that post is sending a message that hate and exclusion is welcome from elected officials, and it shouldn’t be,” Healy said. “We believe that government should serve everyone and not just a powerful few.”

Read the entire story here.

Notice is out this afternoon as Ezra Hays has apparently resigned from the SDGOP’s Executive Board.

Hays had ran the campaign organized to oppose Amendment H on last years’ ballot, and most recently ran to become the Chairman of the South Dakota Republican Party, but lost to (former 32-year Democrat) Jim Eschenbaum.  It’s interesting that this comes at a time when the party’s finances are in danger of collapse, as his position takes very little time at all.

Is he getting out, while the getting is good?

Stay tuned… it’s only going to get more interesting as we get into the fall.

When State Representative Logan Manhart finds himself in a hole..  he really needs to stop positioning himself as the defender of white men.

If you recall my post from this last week, Rep. Manhart adorned in full “Toby Doeden for Governor” regalia posted to instagram declaring that it’s “white boy summer.”

Predictably, he has taken a number of hits on social media over it. And that instagram post has disappeared as if it never existed.

But, the Internet is forever and as he continues to rack up hit points, Logan felt the need to respond to the controversy. And proves the adage that when you find yourself in a hole at the bottom of a pit, it’s time to quit digging:

“..the same legislators who are criticizing me have spent their unremarkable political careers chastising and criticizing white men at every turn, oftentimes for, simply, existing.”

Jesus H.. STOP taking about the plight of the white man!

Seriously, Rep. Manhart needs to quit while he’s behind. Because he did no benefit for himself by continuing to portray himself as the defender of the white.

I caught this image on the Minnehaha Democrat Party’s facebook recently. And if we were in a movie or a book, I would consider it foreshadowing.

What’s my thought process on it? Hear me out.  Everyone in the photo declaring their comeback is a current or former candidate for the Democrat Party. Except one.

• Billie Sutton – Ran for Governor, narrowly lost to Kristi Noem
• Jamie Smith – Ran for Governor, was completely crushed by Kristi Noem, and is now running for SF Mayor.
• Sheryl Johnson – Yes, she did run for office. She ran as “SD Mom” for Congress in the last election, where she received 28% against Congressman Dusty Johnson
• Julian Beaudion – announced he is running for US Senate.
• Nikki Gronli – Appointed as USDA State Director for Rural Development by President Biden.

Everyone in the photo has ran, or is running for statewide office. Except Nikki Gronli. (a.k.a., Nikki “three shell” Gronli, if I could remind you):

Upon her departure from USDA, Gronli recently took the lead for Democrats in being the face of their Democrat town halls, which seems to have a large self-promotion component, given that she’s the one leading them on the SDDP’s behalf as opposed to a member of the opposition party’s leadership or current officeholders being the face of the party on this.

So, if cynical me were to go out on a limb, I would offer an educated guess that this the dog & pony show – at least in part – is to raise Gronli’s profile among Democrats prior to announcing her candidacy for public office.  Interestingly, South Dakota Democrats are having their annual state dinner fundraiser this weekend in Sioux Falls, featuring Tim Walz, their party’s most recent Vice Presidential offering.  It’s entirely possible that we may see an announcement of what she’s going to run for at the event.

Stay tuned.

The local conspiracy theorists are at it again.

Over the weekend, several of them were clucking because Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has announced a measure to ban cloud seeding, which they seem to translate as supportive of efforts to shoot down planes that have jet contrails.

Here’s one of them who somehow manages to connect chemtrails with bitcoin, florinated(sic) water, and hand-counting ballots. Because in their words – they are “evil”:

And it’s great they can find their validation in Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. But this is also the “Jewish Space Lasers caused the California fires” Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“Then oddly there are all these people who have said they saw vhat looked like lasers or blue beams of light causing the fires, and pictures and videos. I don’t know anything about that but I do find it really curious PG&E’s partnership with Solaren on space solar generators starting in 2009. They announced the launch into space in March 2018, and maybe even put hem up before that. Space solar generators collect the suns energy and then beam it back to Earth to a transmitter to convert to electricity. The idea is clean energy to replace coal and oil. if they are beaming he suns energy back to Earth, I’m sure they wouldn’t ever miss a transmitter receiving station right??!! l nean mistakes are never made when anything new is invented. What would that look like anyway? A laser beam or light beam coming down to Earth I guess. Could that cause a fire? Hmmm, I don’t know. I hope not! That wouldn’t look so good for PG&E, Rothschild Inc, Solaren or Jerry Brown who sure does seem fond of PG&E.”

If MTG is the kind of Republican they want to be, I think I’ll stick with Reagan Republicanism.  It involves a lot less time being paranoid about made-up things in the sky.

I just caught an interesting development with the State Republican Party that nobody seems to be talking about.  If you visit the Internet Wayback machine, on June 15 the archive service captured this portion of the Republican Party’s website:

Yet, if you look at the live version today…

In the last two weeks, they seem to have misplaced their Fundraising Director:

Considering that this comes after their own reports of abysmal fundraising, yet on the cusp of them presenting a fundraising plan to central committee members in less than two weeks, that would seem to be a topic that central committee members might have to ask about.

Remember when SDGOP Chairman (& former 32-year Obama Democrat) Jim Eschenbaum claimed “We don’t need any more money thrown to the state GOP than what we need to operate?” (..at the same time he noted they wanted to weed out RINO’s from the party)

I’m thinking that the party might be having some second thoughts about their chairman declaring they don’t need any money.  Because it appears that things are looking bad at the SDGOP in terms of what they’re seeing in donations.

How bad are they getting? Had this note sent to me the other day by the party through an intermediary not long after they filed receiving no donations that month other than from the treasurer on their FEC Report:

Things are so bad that the party actually came crawling to me for something the party put out 2-3 years ago?  That’s funny! (You can about guess my reply).

With that as the launching point, yesterday, the SDGOP sent out their proposed budget for the next year, as well as how they’ve done so far in fundraising for 2025:

SDGOP_ExpensesandBudget by Pat Powers on Scribd

So many pie in the sky projections. Has anyone actually done any fundraising before?

I don’t see any expenses for their “Miller Golf Tournament” where they were splitting the proceeds. They actually believe they’re going to take in $30k for a statewide mailer after the previous year the party actually lost money on the last statewide mailer (as I was told) & no line item for postage on that or any other mailer. They think they’re going to raise 25k on a raffle they’re going to sink 15k into, and they’re going to get another $17-18K out of county GOP organizations?

Well. Good luck with that.

Also the party’s finances continue to dim with a notation that as of 6/1, they are down to $29,825.30 in the state account and $26,770.01 in the federal, giving them less than $58,000 total among all their accounts in the face of dwindling finances and few prospects.

Stay tuned, as we find out if the chairman still believes that they “don’t need any more money” a few months from now.

Here’s an interesting difference of opinion.  Toby Doeden, the man who is doing his damndest to buy his way into office no matter what it costs, recently slobbered over State Representative Dylan Jordan somehow claiming he’s qualified to judge him the “conservative conscience” of  Northeast South Dakota.

While Doeden may have feted DJ Jazzy Jordan, don’t forget that recently, former State Rep. Fred Deutsch – an actual conservative – found Dylan a bit more fetid over Jordan’s pledge to have civilian aircraft shot out of the sky:

It’s one thing to express your views about chemtrails, but it’s entirely another to advocate for legislation for the National Guard to “take military action” against aircraft flying over SD. That’s not just kooky, but wrong and dangerous.

Read that here.

I’m thinking “kooky and dangerous” is the more accurate opinion in this instance.

The SDGOP sent out a meeting announcement along with a financial statement yesterday, so there is SO MUCH to unpack; more than I can address in a single post.

But first and foremost is a single line on the agenda, which indicates one of Chairman (& former 32-year Obama Democrat) Jim Eschenbaum’s prime agenda items are being moved forward – a scorecard for elected officials and the party endorsing candidates in the primary.

According to the agenda:

7-19-25-SDGOP_Agenda by Pat Powers on Scribd

At the bottom of “New Business” on page two is a line noting that Proposed Scorecard Reviews and Endorsements are on the agenda, which is in line with earlier warnings from Chairman Eschenbaum that this was part of his plan, despite endorsing candidates being contrary to over 140 years of Republican tradition in this state – and I’m talking about going back to the Republican party before statehood.

While in the very distant past factions within the party may have had a preferred candidate, and the SDGOP has elected candidates at convention, they have never gotten into actual endorsements in primary elections. In fact, as recently as just a few years ago, the SDGOP has noted it’s neutrality. While they will support it’s elected officials, they weren’t going to get into playing favorites.

Until now, where this new group in charge of the party has decided to come in with an agenda of breaking the SDGOP.

Now it appears they are looking to move forward with splitting the baby into multiple pieces. Make you wonder how. Will they do it based on how much someone donates – Is the party to be bought off?  Or will they do it based on holding a second convention which will be expensive – an early endorsement convention where special delegates come in? Or will it be a star chamber where a select few get to pick?

That’s the problem with this sort of thing. It’s most likely going to be based on how those in the small group want to game it so their candidate has an advantage. They aren’t – for example – going to send out a mailer to every Republican in the state so it’s participatory where all registered Republicans have a voice.

It will be about the few making a choice.

The question is – how few? And how much will registered Republicans tolerate it?