South Dakota Democrats are back doing what they do best… complaining that they’re under-represented on committees, and should have special privileges despite the fact that they have a problem convincing voters to send Democrats to Pierre to do the people’s business:
Heinert said he’s lobbying Schoenbeck to place a Democrat on the judiciary committee, motivated by that panel’s oversight of bills dealing with the corrections system and potentially legislation related to recent passage by voters of legal marijuana.
But Schoenbeck isn’t budging. He told the Argus Leader that Senate Democrats are already over-represented on standing committees based on the number of seats they hold.
To his point, Democrats hold just 8.5% of Senate seats while Schoenbeck is filling 11% of Senate committee seats with minority party members. To compare, 11% of House committee seats are filled by Democrats, an equal proportion to their representation as a whole in that chamber.
“The way to have more slots is to have more South Dakotans think you have good ideas at election time,” Schoenbeck said.
Elections have consequences. And as a consequence of Democrats losing almost all of their elections is that they lack sufficient numbers to cover all the committees.