Author: @SoDakCampaigns

Just a few days after releasing a rather coy press statement on social media that he’s considering a rematch in the congressional race, former State Senator Neal Tapio seems to be kind-of sort-of dipping his toe in the water and doing the things a candidate would do if they’re more than “actively considering,” as he hangs out around the Turner County Fair today, in an old shirt that says “Tapio for US House:”

(That old thing? He must have just thrown on what he had handy!)  I’m also hearing word that Neal also may make an appearance at the Brookings County GOP picnic this coming Friday night.

For all the ‘active consideration’ miles that Neal is starting to log, it sure sounds like a lot of ‘active campaigning’ without the benefit of having palm cards and stickers ready to hand out yet!

Governor Kristi Noem’s social media account has released a new video for facebook – A day in the life of Lt. Governor Larry Rhoden:

From Facebook:

It’s probably a good thing that the Legislature is looking into liberal bias on our state university campuses. Because as noted tonight by the Campus Reform website, from time to time things are popping up at our university campuses that might leave a lot of South Dakotans scratching their heads and asking “what are they teaching?”

In the latest, it sounds like just this past year, in 2018 at a diversity orientation presentaiton, law school students at USD were being asked if they were “deferring to “minoritized” voices during discussions,” because if they weren’t… they were being told they might need to consider if they were “taking up space.”

A diversity orientation presentation for law students at the University of South Dakota encourages non “minitorized” voices to consider whether or not they are “taking up space” when they contribute to a discussion.  This comes just weeks after the South Dakota Board of Regents announced an investigation into the existence of liberal bias in the diversity offices of state schools.

The presentation slides obtained by Campus Reform through a Freedom of Information Act request indicate that they were used during the USD law school orientation in 2018. Within the various slides is a flowchart that asks students to assess whether or not they are “taking up space” or “contributing to a space.” One slide uses a flowchart to guide students through answering this question by assessing whether or not they are deferring to “minoritized” voices during discussions.

and..

“The slide that you indicate is a conversation piece that I inserted into last year’s Law School Orientation session on Diversity & Inclusive Excellence at USD,” Lamont Sellers, associate vice president for diversity at USD, told Campus Reform in a statement Monday.

Read the entire story here.

Hm.. Was that 5.9 million in University diversity office spending I just heard being scratched out of the budget…..?

The head of New Approach South Dakota, Melissa Mentele is in the comment section of the prior post with what we might call false braggadocio, making a claim of hundreds of volunteers, and claiming that they’ll be successful in the pot group’s efforts to put their version of medical marijuana on the 2020 ballot.

We don’t get to buy our way onto the ballot we have to work for it. Your name calling & accusations reflect badly upon you, more so than us. You cant forget that pesky fact that our organization was hired by our former Governor & former Republican Speaker of the House last petition cycle because of our work ethic & organizational capabilities.

Well, Melissa’s typical drama aside, I can’t help but have a healthy dose of skepticism, and offer a historical view as I note, “Yeah, but.”

In 2017, the last time the NASD group attempted to put medical pot on the ballot, they only had to collect 13,871 valid signatures to place the measure on the ballot. The Attorney General issued a ballot title and summary for the initiative on March 27, 2017, meaning they started circulation within days thereafter, end of March, first of April that year.

On November 6, 2017, they turned in 15k signatures.  And they fell short of the required 13,871 valid signatures by 4,401 valid signatures, meaning they only collected 9470 valid signatures in 7 months of circulating petitions.

Fast forward to now. The same group is starting in their latest effort on about August 15th, and they have until November 4th. Giving them a little over 2 1/2 months to collect a minimum of 16,961 valid signatures.

If New Approach South Dakota failed to collect 10,000 valid signatures over the course of seven months in the last election, history encourages a more than healthy amount of skepticism for the organization’s efforts to do better in 2020 with a higher benchmark and only about 1/3 of the time that they had enjoyed in their 2018 effort.

In other words, You can stick a fork in that potato right now. They’re done before they start.

It’s not going to happen.  The best they can hope for is “next time.”

State Senator Lynne DiSanto (or Lyn or Lyndi or whatever she’s calling herself nowadays) apparently earned herself a ban recently from state correctional facilities after filming an interview with an inmate, despite being directly told she couldn’t by the Deputy Secretary of Corrections without prior approval:

and…

After being interviewed recently by the Journal about the situation, DiSanto contacted Leidholt and told him an employee at the prison gave her permission to record. Leidholt said he then conducted an inquiry to determine whether that employee — apparently, a control-room operator — had in fact given DiSanto permission.

From Campus Reform, the South Dakota Board of Regents decided that it might be prudent for state universities to uphold free speech. Which really raises the question of what they were doing before, and demands that the Legislature continue to look over their shoulders:

Among the policy changes, public universities in South Dakota will no longer be able to discriminate against “any student or student organization” based on viewpoint or ideology. Student organizations will also be able to require members to “affirm and adhere to the organization’s sincerely held beliefs.”

A South Dakota Board of Regents spokeswoman told Campus Reform that the board approved all three free speech policies.

and…

The report also has to include if any events on campus “impeded intellectual diversity and the free exchange of ideas.”

“The ideas of different members of the institutions’ community will often and quite naturally conflict, and some individuals’ ideas will even conflict with the institutions’ values and principles,” the policy reads. “But it is not the proper role of the Board or the institutions to attempt to shield individuals from viewpoints they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”

Read the entire story here.

Weren’t they supposed to be doing this already? Free speech and all.

Glad they’ve finally come to the realization that they need to put it on paper that  “it is not the proper role of the Board or the institutions to attempt to shield individuals from viewpoints they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”  We’ll see if they practice what they have finally come around to preaching.

Sometimes you catch a story in your newsfeed that has you asking “what is this bullshit?”  This morning for me, it was this ridiculous love letter penned to Rick Weiland:

Weiland is the ultimate prairie populist. His views come from experience, rather than from focus groups or consultants. His ç in 2014 when he personally sang his platform to the tune of Roger Miller’s King of the Road:

and…

As any populist ought to be, Weiland was ahead of his time in 2014. He took on his party’s establishment because he wasn’t then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s choice to run in that race: Stephanie Herseth Sandlin was. Weiland, in turn, let Reid know he wasn’t Weiland’s choice for majority leader if he won the seat.

In the end, Herseth Sandlin decided not to run, and Weiland won the primary.

and…

In the general election, the press got excited. Many D.C.-based journalists flew here to cover the race, reporting it was going be a close one. In the end, it wasn’t, in part because the belief took hold that Weiland was more liberal than populist. “I don’t think I was,” he says. “I think I got tagged being liberal because I didn’t support the Keystone Pipeline.”

Read the entire pile of it here.

Was someone promised a free meal in exchange for this ridiculous and slobbering story over one of the most insincere people to ever try their hand at statewide office in South Dakota?

It lacks basic fact checking in favor of trying to rewrite history. If by the fact there was no primary election for Democrats in 2014 for US Senate, you could say Weiland “won the primary.” In reality, it just didn’t happen.  Not to mention that the prospect that Weiland’s “authenticity was apparent in his iconic campaign video in 2014 when he personally sang his platform” is laughable.

And local media certainly weren’t buying the line that Weiland was some middle of the road populist back during the election, with even the Argus admitting he was as liberal as Minnesota’s Paul Wellstone at the time.

By Bonica’s method, Paul Wellstone closed out his career at a -1.42 on a scale where most mainstream candidates fall between -2 to +2, with negative numbers being more liberal.

Weiland in 2014 is a -1.25 on that same scale — less liberal than Wellstone, though in the same general neighborhood.

Read that here.

Time blurs many lenses. But trying to claim that Rick Weiland was some sort of “prairie populist” instead of a crass and liberal political opportunist is not an assertion that anyone in South Dakota can take seriously.

Since she got her tail kicked in the Sioux Falls School Board race, and the National Constitutional Party said hell no to having anything to do with her, Lora Hubbel has been keeping a keeping a low profile.  Or at least there’s been no reason to see what she’s up to.

So, I decided to stop by the former gubernatorial candidate’s facebook page to see what the 411 is with the former candidate. And I’m sorry I looked.

So, what’s Lora up to? Looks like she still hates me… she’s still trashing the SDGOP… claims vaccines also cause shaken baby syndrome… and she thinks the little yellow cartoon minions are grooming children for a gay lifestyle.

Nope. I can’t say it looks like anything has changed with Lora. At all.

The University of South Dakota, home of the Hawaiian.. er, home of the Beach Day Party, apparently has some faculty members a bit nervous on losing their campus monopoly on speech.

In the wake of the legislature taking aim at intellectual diversity, “members of the USD campus community have raised questions and concerns about what has happened thus far and what might happen in the future,” triggering University of South Dakota President Sheila Gestring to host and send out an all-staff invite to “an open forum to address questions and concerns about free speech and intellectual diversity” on Friday, September 6th.

Interestingly, this e-mail on an “Intellectual Diversity Public Conversation” is directed to staff.. with not much of a mention as to whether students will be invited. In fact, I don’t note any mention of it on the University of South Dakota website, or the website’s public calendar of events in the week and a half since the e-mail blast went out .

If it’s a “Public Conversation” as the e-mail blast from President Gestring claims, the University is keeping the “public conversation” pretty darned quiet.

But, why would USD want that public conversation to actually include the students they serve? Considering their past track record on speech issues, an actual public conversation with all of the public they serve might be a little too uncomfortable for some.

As to what might happen in the future.. I think we’ll know more after the 2020 Legislative Session.