Author: Pat Powers

Here’s more about the woman who has thrown her name into the race for Public Utilities Commissioner against Kristie Fiegen. Because she sounds like a kook:

Amber Christenson of rural Strandburg and Linda and Timothy Lindgren of rural South Shore had filed a formal complaint on September 21, 2022, that Crowned Ridge Wind’s turbines in the area were making more noise than allowed by the PUC’s permit that was granted for the project in 2019 and alleging that Crowned Ridge failed to comply with a 2021 mitigation plan.

and..

Fiegen agreed with the contention by Crowned Ridge’s attorneys that the technical expertise involved in this case is beyond the knowledge of the average lay person. “As a commissioner, I’m upholding the law regarding the rules of evidence,” Fiegen said. “So Crowned Ridge, be prepared tomorrow (Wednesday) for the tough questions Amber has asked in her rebuttal, although they won’t be on the record in the evidence.”

and..

Said Nelson, “It’s unfortunate, certainly.” He noted that the commission had been working for four years on the sound-level issue. “Today was the day appointed to get to the bottom of this.”

Hanson described the situation as like “showing up at the wedding and the brides not there — it’s a little difficult” and said he was surprised. “I’m just amazed she is not here. I hope nothing bad happened on the drive here,” he said. “It leaves us with no other direction than to support the motion.”

and..

Christenson said the commission can still delve into the issue that she raised. “They don’t need me.” As to not showing up, she said, “I guess it was my civil disobedience.”

Read it all here.

So, this gal files and gets a hearing on a formal complaint where experts were drug from across the country, AND she sucks up taxpayer time and money on the hearing. But she skips attending as her “civil disobedience.”

And now she wants to be a PUC commissioner?  Hard pass on a goofball candidate.

And if the State GOP Convention disagrees? Well, it was nice being a party that used to know how to win elections.

Circling back to last afternoon’s announcement that State Rep. Phil Jensen will be challenging Watertown Mayor Reid Holien for representing South Dakota at the national level as the SDGOP National Committeeman, as Republicans, it should give us all pause as to what image we want to represent.

Because Phil Jensen might be the worst role model to represent South Dakota Republicans.

Let me count the ways…

During Vietnam, Phil was a draft-dodger:

“I was drafted,” Jensen said. “And I filed for conscientious objector and I was going through a process of looking for alternative service. And then Nixon cancelled the drafting power before I got established.”

Read that here.

He’s been a Member of the far-right Oath Keepers Militia

“In 2014 I was sitting at my desk in the Senate chambers and I had read some information about the Oath Keepers. I took an oath to uphold the Constitution and the South Dakota Constitution, and it seemed like a good group of guys to belong to.”

Read that here.

He brought a bill that would’ve made it justifiable homicide to actually kill a doctor who performed abortions.

Phil says that he believes to be OK for businesses to deny service on the basis of race or religion:

While the bill was killed, Jensen defended it to the Journal as legislation that would ensure businesses have the freedom to choose their clientele. He also said that businesses should also have the right to choose based on race and religion – whether that’s right or wrong, he said, can be fairly addressed by the free market, not the government.

Read that there.

Let’s not forget his skills in phrenology.

Speaking over the phone on the way to Pierre on Tuesday, Jensen recalled when one of his constituents told him he witnessed “dozens of South Americans” fleeing a white bus parked near downtown Rapid City.

“He knew they were South Americans,” Jensen said, “because they had different skull structures and skin tones from Mexicans.”

Read it here.

Did I miss any of the high points?

If the South Dakota Republican Party wants to portray to the rest of the nation that we are a bunch of backwater redneck crazy uncles who might be racists, then he might be a good selection.

I for one tend to disagree, and think we can do better.  Ried Holien has done a nice job, and will not bring the SDGOP National embarrassment.

I’m hearing an early report (nothing official yet) that Justin McNeal has failed in his petition signature collection once again, and did not get sufficient signatures to run, this time as an independent on the ballot.

2 different party campaigns attempted. 2 failures.

At this point, is he going to switch to Libertarian? He hasn’t done that one yet. Or maybe he can get with Terry LaFleur and revive the Constitution party?

You never know.

It sounds like convention chaos has already kicked off.

The word I am hearing is that infamous state legislator and awful person Phil Jensen will be challenging Watertown Mayor Reid Holien at the South Dakota Republican Party convention for the office of party national committeeman.

A Rapid City woman, Amber Christianson, has supposedly also made an announcement for Public Utilities Commission, challenging sitting PUC Commissioner Kristi Fiegen.

Maybe I’m the only one, but reading this account of how Minnehaha county Auditor Leah Anderson seemingly ambushed a precinct superintendent in conjunction with election conspiracy group head Jessica Pollema, it throws up some red flags as to how closely the two walk hand-in-hand on election issues:

“I just want to give you a heads up about something,” Anderson said in a voicemail to Mikkelsen, which has been obtained by the Argus Leader. “We’re going to be headed over there, and we need your precinct board to, um, work on an issue.”

And…

Pollema and Anderson were seen talking together to some degree: An Argus Leader reporter was speaking with Pollema while ballots were being counted, when Anderson interrupted to ask if the canvassing group leader knew whether some or all of the challenged ballots were tossed. Anderson later handed Pollema, a citizen, a stack of unknown documents, as the county auditor was wrapping up the ballot count for the night.

It’s unclear what those documents were and what Anderson’s next steps will be in the matter, as well as whaat role the South Dakota Secretary of State’s office, which oversees the election process statewide, may have down the line, if any.

Read the entire story here.

Have you ever wondered what kind of election you would have if nobody was on the top of the ticket, and nobody really cared?

That would be what we ended up with tonight for the 2024 primary election campaign. As we wait for many results to roll in from West River, it’s 11 o’clock at night, and we have yet to hit 13% voter turnout.

It’s bad. Not just a little bad, but really distorted from what we might logically expect from election results.  Let me show you one of my bellwether elections that I’ve been watching;

This is the race where election conspiracy fetishist Rick Weible ran against Senate majority leader Casey Crabtree.

Senator Crabtree ran a reasonably strong and effective campaign in his race as an incumbent to return to the leader ship of the State Senate. Rick Weible didn’t.

In fact, Weible literally did nothing except run an bad joint ad in the local shopper paper that never changed, and the highlight of his campaign was him talking about how his life was in danger from knowing secrets about election equipment.

Yet somehow, in spite of his doing nothing but occasional goofiness, Weible achieved 28% of the vote. The previous ‘dead cat bounce’ in typical years, where a candidate could run against a dead cat, and the dead cat would receive 18 to 20% of the vote, has been elevated closer to 30% because of the unusually low turnout, amplifying the influence of the hard hard right.

And it is playing some electoral chaos so far this evening with no fewer than six incumbents unseated with shocking results in other races as I write this.

These results would not be happening two years from now with possibly three major primary contests ahead of the legislative races. But in a year when most people didn’t even realize there was an election, the unexpected is status quo.

Keep watching the results. Because I’m sure the ride isn’t even close to being over.

From Facebook, it sounds as if the Minnehaha county auditor should have instituted the 6P program for election workers: Prior planning prevents **** poor performance:

The day before the election, and the Minnehaha County auditor does not have a sufficient number of poll workers?

I had heard about this being an issue about a week ago, when a candidate was talking to people who were poll workers over on the western side of Minnehaha county. These poll workers said they had not been contacted for training or anything, and were in fact, wondering why they hadn’t heard anything as they had done the work for years.

It sounds like the county auditor’s office dropped the ball, and we may be watching a slow moving disaster starting at 7 o’clock tomorrow night.

Will they know who their precinct people are before the Republican convention commences on Thursday?

They may still be counting on their fingers and toes at that point.

From Facebook..

I wonder what Qualm is referring to….?

Nooo! Make it go away!

Did not need to see that. (Jesus. That’s why they invented photoshop.)

From the mailbox, one of our observant correspondents points out that a couple of the members of the hard right who are running on being constitutional conservatives might be more believable if they spelled it correctly in their mailers.

from D7’s Jeff Struwe..

From D19’s Steven Mettler..

Consi-tutional sounds like someone is slurring an expression of freedom, not declaring it.

Not that spelling it correctly was going to get either elected.

Late today, I received the weirdest piece of campaign literature that I have the entire primary. The lone Jeff Struwe postcard.

An itty-bitty 4×6 card with rambling, itty-bitty type that another couple of hundred dollars probably would’ve made a 6 x 9, because the postage price is the same. But instead, we’ve got something that many people in their mid- 50s and up will struggle to read.

And it spends most of its time rambling against SB 201, the landowner Bill of Rights.

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Liz May’s Conservative PAC is blasting attack cards across the primary, including against several incumbents in the last days before the election.

Interestingly, Liz is going to have a tougher general election than usual against incumbent house member Rep. Pourier, and Elsie Meeks, who was the 1998 candidate for Lieutenant Governor, who later was state director of USDA in South Dakota from 2009 to 2015.

Liz does have things in common with Meeks, as I’m sure just like Liz, Elsie was also a donor to Hillary Clinton.

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There’s other weirdness out there, but I’m waiting for copies to head my way. I’ll post as I get.