Can any of the GOP challengers get past the contrarian vote line?

Coming off of a divisive 2020 election environment, the primary 2022 is already active with those who think the environment is ripe to up-end the status quo.  Unfortunately for those challengers at the top of the ticket, they have yet to illustrate that they have a winning formula to take out any of the three incumbents.

In recent years, there seems to be what we might call the contrarian vote or the dead cat vote. Understanding that some people will vote against a popular incumbent just to be contrarian, It’s the vote that a dead cat might possibly receive if they were running against the incumbent.

In the past, when contrarian candidate Lora Hubbel ran as a Republican head to head in a primary against Governor Dennis Daugaard 4 years after her previous winning election, she received 19.1% of the vote.  In 2020, when Elizabeth Marty May ran head to head against incumbent Congressman Dusty Johnson, having a few more resources than Hubbel, May received 23.3% of the vote.  Scyller Borglum, who challenged incumbent US Senator Mike Rounds, received 24.8% of the primary vote.

Looking at those figures, in my estimation, you can peg that contrarian vote within the GOP electorate firmly in the area of 20-25%. And to get further would take significant resources or extraordinary circumstances.  And for any of the challenger candidates in the 2022 election, those would not seem to exist.

Let’s take a look at each race individually.

 

US Senate – Incumbent Senator John Thune

US Senator John Thune is in the paper again recently for people speculating what he will and won’t do because he hasn’t made a re-election announcement yet. But the plain and simple truth is that he doesn’t have to. John Thune is literally one of the 400lb gorillas in South Dakota politics in terms of organization, funding, and popularity.

Thune has taken a few stones from some of the outliers in South Dakota politics who worship President Trump to the exclusion of anyone else for earlier comments for suggesting that Trump attempting to challenge Biden’s election in the US Senate “would go down like a ‘Shot Dog.’”  As a result, there were those who believed that a challenger candidate would emerge against the US Senator.

And three challengers did rise.. but without exception, all of those that emerged are literally what one might consider “C level” candidates.  Except they are “C Level” candidates for a State Legislative race. Given the campaign acumen they’ve shown to this point, it’s utterly ridiculous to think they’re anything close to being capable of running a statewide campaign against the #2 Republican in the US Senate.

Mark Mowry, a Spearfish area gig musician/maintenance man might be the farthest ahead of the trio, having raised $5500.. after a $4000 loan to himself.  He’s followed by 2006 Congressional candidate Bruce Whalen. Whalen, who lost that race 69% – 29% with the backing of the GOP at the time, hasn’t been able to raise $500 at the time of the last FEC report.

The third candidate, Patrick Schubert Sr., seems to be less active that the other two candidates, preferring to post on Facebook than to travel outside his immediate vicinity. Which is a bad sign when the state you’re trying to represent is over 77,000 square miles.

It is not of any use to try to predict how many votes these candidates will receive, because I very seriously question if any of these candidates will be able to get on the ballot. Period.

 

Congress – Incumbent Congressman Dusty Johnson

Independent polling shows that among the population at large, Congressman Dusty Johnson is the most popular political figure in South Dakota at the moment. And in the same poll, he’s the second most popular political figure among Republicans at 66%, just behind Governor Kristi Noem who is tops for the GOP at 77%.

Seemingly though, despite his extreme popularity, among the farthest right reaches of the GOP, Dusty is Rodney Dangerfield. Despite his willingness to be thoughtful and consider the issues before him in Congress based on their merit, they just don’t seem to give him any respect. And here we are again with another primary.

Just as when Liz May ran against him in 2020, it appears that members of the far right have talked another sitting legislator who had never expressed disdain over his voting record into challenging him. In fact, challenger and State Representative Taffy Howard had been a regular critic of not Johnson, but Governor Kristi Noem.  But inexplicably, this summer Taffy started putting a campaign together to run for US Congress.  And then this past July started moving it forward.

What is Howard’s reason for running? On her website, she touts that her message is that she wants to “Fix Election Fraud. Fix immigration. Fix the Debt,” trying to paint Dusty Johnson as somehow being against those things. Despite there being no popular hue and cry against Johnson on any of those issues.

In fact, at the same time Howard has been trying to define Johnson and the sisyphean task of attempting to challenge him, Johnson has been rated as the most effective Republican in Congress on Ag, and as previously mentioned, noted as being immensely popular.  This is compared to Howard’s own record of being unable to pass any legislation she authored in the past regular session.

In terms of campaign funding, in her first report Howard was able to report that she raised $86k, against Dusty Johnson’s $219k. However, $72,000 cash on hand against Dusty Johnson’s $1.7 Million during the same period was not a show of strength. We’ll know more after the first of the year how the candidate’s next financial matchup compares.

I suspect that Representative Howard will be able to achieve ballot status, as she has a member of her campaign team who has a business collecting petition signatures. But, since it’s a business, I’m sure she will be largely paying for the privilege.

Taffy might arguably be the strongest of the challenger candidate, but that’s not saying a lot, especially against Dusty.  I think there’s an outside possibility she might be able to get more votes than Liz May’s 23.3%. But I don’t think she’s going to be able to move the needle much farther.  At this point, optimistically for her, look for the Howard campaign to possibly capture 25-26% of the primary ballot.

 

Governor – Incumbent Governor Kristi Noem

Governor Kristi Noem is currently the most popular elected official among Republicans in the State of South Dakota.  Democrats might not be so enamored, but before she faces any race this fall (such as against the clown campaign of Lora Hubbel), there’s a potential primary brewing where she rules the roost.

And I believe her primary opponent, State Representative and former Speaker of the House Steve Haugaard is going to take a thrashing at the ballot box.

On an interpersonal level, Haugaard is a nice guy, and I don’t have any reason to say he’s anything but a good person. Really, no one would say that he’s anything but a gentleman. But as a public speaker, well… I’ll put it this way. Steve badly needs some help on the charisma front.

As for his bonafides, Haugaard’s claim to fame as Speaker of the House just did not go well. While he was Speaker, someone in the leadership team allegedly set forth a set of rules describing a dress code which I was told demanded no sleeveless outfits for women, hemlines that must be below the knees, and nylons must be worn, among other things.  Governor Noem has already used that item in critique of Haugaard.

Then there was the incident where he banned Municipal League Lobbyist Yvonne Taylor from the House Floor after she wrote a column in their newsletter the previous May, where..

In her column, Taylor called the lawmakers “wackies” and wrote that they weren’t willing to “listen to the facts, and make rational decisions,” instead blanket voting down any issue involving increased taxes or fees.

According to the lawsuit, Rep. Haugaard responded that the article made the Legislature look like “a bunch of buffoons,” and then banned Taylor from the floor of the House last week.

Taylor is now suing Haugaard, arguing that his actions violated her right to free speech and amounted to unlawful retaliation.

Read that here. https://www.newscenter1.tv/south-dakota-speaker-of-the-house-sued-over-banning-lobbyist/

That did not go well for the Speaker, who lost the case among blistering criticism at the time. These are all points which he is certainly going to hear about again as the campaign gets rolling.

The primary campaign is still fairly early, but since his entrance into the race against Governor Kristi Noem, Haugaard has not presented any substantive policy differences between he and the Governor, except quibbling over vaccine mandates/non-mandates, and taking issue with the state’s settlement in the matter of the former head of the Real Estate Appraiser program.

Coming off of the Governor’s Budget Address, Haugaard’s response was literally to say it proposes spending too much, at a time when the state is flush with cash and has it to spend alongside “use it or lose it” funds. To little or no notice.  And that’s been the problem since he’s kicked off. Haugaard’s press releases seem to be getting no traction whatsoever in the media..

At some point, he’s going to have to campaign on what he would actually do, versus his current efforts of throwing lawn darts at Governor Noem.

Campaign Finance reports in February will be more illustrative, but it’s not clear that he has financial support coming from any one sector of the GOP political spectrum besides himself.

Like all of the current challengers across the primary races, Haugaard is coming at this in an attempt to run to the right of Kristi Noem.  I have to re-state it. Steve Haugaard is trying to out-conservative Kristi Noem, who might be the most conservative Governor in modern times in addition to being the most popular Republican officeholder among Republicans. Literally, Haugaard’s problem is trying to figure out how anyone “out-conservatives” Governor Kristi Noem without looking like a character out of the Salem witch trials.

Haugaard will probably get in the ballot, most likely by teaming up with Taffy Howard. But if he’s on his own he may find it a bit more of a challenge.

Where do I peg Haugaard’s vote total? Unless he can figure out why he wants to be Governor besides campaigning on not being Kristi Noem, I predict he’s going to also end up in that low to mid-twenty percentile range.  Let’s just say 24-25%.

Those are my predictions for the campaign season.

Based on the historic record, it’s going to be a challenge for any of them to approach being considered a serious challenge to the incumbents.

Your thoughts?