Author: @SoDakCampaigns

Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken doesn’t care for what Joe Biden’s throwing out there about the difficulty of the job that Mayors have, in reference to what Biden is intimating about his opponent Pete Buttigieg:

This tone deaf ad reeks of elitism and mocks the expansive work we as mayors do to keep our cities running.

America’s biggest problems AND solutions live in our cities. To my fellow mayors out at 5Ks, ribbon cuttings, grocery store sidebars, and more today — keep grinding. https://t.co/jvFh8kZeOH

— Paul TenHaken (@paultenhaken) February 8, 2020

Just saw this on facebook for District 6 GOP House Candidate Aaron Alyward because it holds a few lessons that are good to point out for candidates on what to think about in your campaign pieces, and as you’ll see here, what not to do:

I like Aylward’s picture on the back, as it is a good, professional quality photo. Big point I try to tell candidates; good photos provide professional quality results. I would have removed the chair from the picture on the front and used a complete cut out as an alternative, as it would have provided more room, or at least more white space for the text.

And then we get to the problems with the card… And there are several.

First and foremost, what is that god awful logo? It’s not just bad, but it’s really bad. His candidacy is what he’s supposed to be selling. Not a giant star.  It serves no purpose for a graphic element to dominate to that extreme degree.. in fact, it works against the candidate.   (State Rep. Caleb Weis’ logo makes this same mistake.)   What candidates need to highlight are name and office. Why would he muddle the main point by trying to brand himself with some generic piece of clip art?

Two of the front bullet points are problematic as well. “Aggressive Economic Growth Policies?” Does anyone use that in normal conversation? Is he going to stab someone when advocating for lower taxes or something?  “Individualized Education?”  What on earth is that?  This comes off as inauthentic gobbledygook.

The message on the back of the card is very hard to read, especially with the yellow on light blue providing a low contrast. Not everyone is reading with the eyesight of a 20 year old. Everything seems jammed in there with little margin on the sides, and the text block is badly in need of a paragraph break.  Not to mention the message shifts from the first person perspective to the third person before being signed in the first person.

And with it being a piece expressly geared to the June 2nd primary, why wouldn’t he note which party he’s actually running for? We don’t know if he’s running as a Democrat, Libertarian or Republican.

While the photo on the back is nice, this is otherwise one to send back to the designer, and they should be told to start again from scratch.

Let’s Get Back to Business
By Sen. John Thune

The U.S. Senate has only confronted a presidential impeachment trial three times in American history. The first was President Andrew Johnson’s trial in 1868, which reflected the lingering divisions of the Civil War. The second was President Bill Clinton’s trial more than 130 years later in 1999. At that time, I was serving South Dakota as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. I assumed and hoped that would be the last time I would be involved with the very rarely used impeachment provision in the U.S. Constitution. Regrettably, it was not.

Impeachment is extraordinarily divisive and disruptive. It is, after all, overturning the will of the American people by attempting to remove a duly elected president from office.

Our Founding Fathers intended impeachment to be an extreme remedy used only in extreme circumstances. The history of the Constitutional Convention clearly demonstrates that impeachable behavior must meet a very high threshold. To guard against misuse of this extraordinary power, the Founders split the impeachment power – assigning the authority to impeach solely to the House of Representatives and the power to try impeachments solely to the Senate. As a final check, the Founders required a two-thirds supermajority vote in the Senate to remove a president from office.

For this third presidential impeachment trial in American history, I literally had a front-row seat. My Senate desk is in the front row of the chamber, and I was able to look squarely at the participants in this historic constitutional proceeding.

In the end, I joined a majority of the Senate in voting to acquit the president. My conclusion was based on four key considerations: the facts of the case, the threshold imposed by the Constitution for conviction and removal from office, the deeply flawed and completely partisan House process that led to this impeachment, and the fact that there’s a national election just months away from now.

I listened carefully to the House managers’ case, which included the testimony of more than a dozen witnesses and nearly 30,000 pages of documents. I entered the Senate trial with an open mind, knowing the president’s team would be afforded the fairness and impartiality that were lacking in the House’s highly partisan and one-sided process. In total, I listened to nearly 70 hours’ worth of testimony, questions, and answers from both the House managers and the president’s counsel. While we can debate the president’s judgment, or even conclude that his actions were inappropriate, I determined that this case did not meet the high threshold that our Founders envisioned.

Rescinding the results of a democratic election would be incredibly disruptive under any circumstance, but that’s especially true when there is a presidential election less than 10 months from now. It is the American people, not a bunch of Washington politicians, who should decide this case. I believe a sizable majority of South Dakotans share that view and wanted me to vote to acquit the president. That is how I cast their vote in the Senate.

At one point in the trial, during one of our breaks, a senator from the other side of the aisle approached me on the floor and said, “I sure hope we can still work together when all of this is done.” Throughout this process, there were strong, and at times heated, arguments made by the House managers and the president’s team. Republicans expressed their opinions, and Democrats expressed theirs. But I strongly believe that we should always follow the rule that we can disagree without being disagreeable. This period in our history should be no different, and I look forward to working with my colleagues – Republican and Democrat – now that this trial is finally behind us. Let’s get back to business.

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With Impeachment Behind Us, It’s Time to get Back to Work for South Dakotans
By U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.)

The Senate recently voted to acquit the president of the two Articles of Impeachment sent to us by the House of Representatives, falling 19 and 20 votes short of the 67 needed to remove him from office. I voted against the articles of impeachment, in keeping with the constitutional intent our framers expected.

Throughout the process, I listened carefully as the House Managers and the president’s defense team made their cases to the Senate, taking over 130 pages of notes over the course of the trial. I also studied the text of the Constitution related to impeachment and our Founding Fathers’ intent when they included it in our constitutional framework. This historical context is important to understanding why the House failed to make its case in removing the president from office.

Our Founding Fathers included impeachment in the Constitution after much deliberation – to be used only as a last resort. They also put great thought into the impeachment process. They trusted the Senate, requiring more solemn judgement than their counterparts in the House, to decide whether an allegation by the House has the substantiality to require removal from office.

While the Senate does not have the power to impeach, it does have the authority to judge the sufficiency of articles presented to it. The Senate, as a trier of facts, should not overstep its role. It is the House’s responsibility to bring the evidence to make its case, not simply make an allegation. This does not mean that the Senate cannot call witnesses, but it most certainly should not be the Senate’s obligation to do so because the House failed to do its job in the first place.

Upon the founding of the Senate, James Madison explained that the Senate would be a “necessary fence” against the “fickleness and passion” that tended to influence the attitudes of the general public and members of the House of Representatives. George Washington is said to have told Thomas Jefferson that the framers had created the Senate to ‘cool’ House legislation, just as a saucer was used to cool hot tea.

For impeachment, there can be no difference.

When the House is ignited by partisan passions, eager to reach a desired result, the Senate must be cool and firm in its heightened review.

In recognizing the haste and half-hearted attempt by our colleagues in the House, I also recognize these articles of impeachment to be wholly insufficient, not warranting a removal from office. The rightful place for such a decision to be made is with the American electorate at the ballot box.

From the beginning, the Senate conducted a fair, impartial trial. Senators asked 180 questions, 28,578 pages of documents were made available to us and we watched 193 video clips. We did our due diligence and fulfilled our constitutional duty. And now that the impeachment process is behind us, we can get on with the work the American people sent us here to do: improve the lives of hardworking families. Impeaching an elected official is incredibly serious, as it effectively overturns the will of the American electorate. The House failed miserably to make its case, and the Senate rightly voted to acquit the president.

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Relentless
By Rep. Dusty Johnson

Johnson wears relentless wristband to State of the Union

Thirteen-year-old teenagers are not commonly known for their persistent dedication to serving others. I know I certainly wasn’t. But every once in a while, I’m privileged to meet someone who challenges that norm.

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Floyd Korzan and his parents at Mitchell Middle School. Those early years of young adulthood are difficult for most, but amongst the woes of finding his way in middle school, Floyd made a decision to start an organization that encourages individuals to be relentless. Relentless when facing cancer, relentless in overcoming obstacles, and relentless in dreaming big dreams.

Floyd’s relentless journey started eight years ago when his father, Matt, collapsed while hiking in the Black Hills and was subsequently diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. It’s a path many South Dakota families are forced to walk – the trials of a cancer diagnosis, painful and tiring treatments, and a future filled with uncertainty. Friday nights at the Korzan house looked different than they did before. Instead of pizza and a movie, family nights were spent in a hospital room.

Years passed and after several remissions and relapses, Matt received a successful stem cell transplant from his sister in 2017 and has been cancer-free ever since. Matt’s relentlessness rubbed off on Floyd in a way I doubt Matt even realized. In honor of his father, Floyd’s taken it upon himself to develop the Relentless Pledge and to hand out relentless wristbands to cancer patients across the globe, as well as to local heroes who according to Floyd, “get up every day and work tirelessly to make our community a better place.”

I wear my light-blue relentless wristband with an incredible amount of pride. In fact, I told Floyd I would wear it at this year’s State of the Union address. As President Trump gave his remarks, I found myself glancing down at my wrist – a visible reminder of the tenacity we should all bring to our daily lives in order to make this country an even better place to call home.

I feel a sincere commitment to Floyd, his family and everyone back home in South Dakota, to hold myself to this relentless pledge. More importantly, I hope Friday nights at the Korzan household are filled with many more pizzas and movies in the months and years to come.

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Growing South Dakota’s Communities
By Governor Kristi Noem 

Communities are the heartbeat of South Dakota. As I travel across the state, I hear this over and over: people love our state, and they want to preserve our special way of life for generations to come.

I agree.

South Dakota’s communities are strong, and our people value the traditions rooted in our movie theatres, cafes, and landmarks. In order to preserve these treasures, though, and keep our kids and grandkids right here in South Dakota, we must continue to grow and expand opportunity for them.

At the end of January, I outlined a plan that would fix one of the problems holding back growth in our communities, the conditional use permitting process. My legislation protects local control by letting a local community decide what projects they want to support, rather than a fringe few. It would set up a fair, certain, and reliable system for everyone – the community members and economic developers. In short, as I laid out in my State of the State, it rolls out the red carpet, not the red tape for those who want to create or expand their business.

Thus far, we’ve received the support of county commissioners, agriculture associations, energy business leaders like the South Dakota Wind Energy Association, and many others from around the state.

Notably, Scott VanderWal, President of the South Dakota Farm Bureau said that the bill will “fix a lot of the issues and irritations we’ve had with our permitting process for many years.”

Pennington County Commissioner Gary Drewes supports the change, too, saying “timing is critical for developments, and this bill brings back more local control.”

Craig Anderson, the president of South Dakota Pork Producers, agreed. “This legislation will streamline the process for projects which will make job creation easier in rural South Dakota,” he said.

And Jerry Schmitz, executive director of the South Dakota Soybean Association said this “opens the gates of opportunity” for our hometowns and our way of life.

The most sure-fire way to strengthen South Dakota is to expand economic opportunity so our kids and their kids can stay here and raise their families. I love our state, and we’re working hard to ensure our communities stay strong for generations to come.

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In looking today, it appears that there was a Liz May sighting after all.  From Facebook, it appears she was out yesterday at the Black Hills stock show according to this interview.

In the interview posted by R-Calf, she indicates her first action if elected would be to pass the “packers and stockyards act,” and expresses her belief that she needs to break those entities up:

After I shared the Scyller Borglum post below, I went to Liz Marty May’s facebook page to see if she had shared any campaign activity from this weekend. With the big gun show in Sioux Falls, and a large GOP gathering in Pierre, I wanted to know what I could tell about what the Congressional hopeful was doing today.

And I really didn’t find much. They boasted about achieving 1000 facebook likes. And they posted a Trump meme.

I did see that under the comment section, she might have gone to a crackerbarrel in Newell that she was invited to. But, even that was not entirely clear.

We’ll report any sightings we hear about. But so far it has been silent.

US Senate Candidate Scyller Borglum posted video on the campaign trail in Spearfish today at the Chocolate festival:

Interesting post this afternoon from Sioux Falls City Councilwoman Theresa Stehly:

“It has been a privilege to serve” certainly sounds like she’s out of there, and not going to run. A possibility further borne out by the fact she has no campaign committee, and has so far refused to say she’s running in the face of a massive head of steam behind candidate Alex Jensen.

If Stehly is truly out, word is that former Mayor and radio host Rick Knobe came off of his boat long enough to toss out a few anti-Republican/ anti-trump social media posts to try to gain some attention, and may be a possible candidate in Stehly’s place. We’ll see. Knobe has some lingering name ID, but there’s no indication he’s got the drive to run a citywide contest at the level that Jensen has already prepared for.

There had also been some question about whether Democrat City Councilman Patrick Starr, who proposed punishing gun owners who were victims of theft, was going to run again. I’m hearing this afternoon that he is. Bigger question is who is planning to take him on, as that race is wide open at this point.

And City Councilman Greg Neitzert has reason to smile this weekend as his campaign sign was featured in a recent article at the Argus Leader. Sometimes good things happen for those who are prepared.