Had a note from someone who was attending the Fall River County Republican dinner this weekend:
I didn’t know if you had heard – Jim Eschenbaum announced he is running for re-election as state party chair during the Fall River LDD last night.
That was not something I had heard. And it was not something I had expected.
It also really begs the question why does Jim Eschenbaum think he’s earned another chance at bat?
- The Republican party might be the most divided it has been in the last century. What has the chair done to bring the party together?
- Fundraising might be at the most abysmal level in modern history – in last FEC report, $20 was raised. Democrats raised over $24,000 in this period.
- When was the last state party sponsored event you heard of? Conventions don’t count. I’m talking actual events for fundraising or media attention.
- AI slop on Facebook has become the communication tool of choice. When was the last time the party issued a press release? (Hint, it was the chair facilitating an attack on Senator Thune)
- How many times has the chair attacked our statewide elected officials during his tenure?
- How much candidate assistance has the party provided under Eschenbaum? Has he reached out to help new candidates?
- How has the party promoted the GOP slate of candidates up and down the ticket? Besides occasional posting on facebook.
- Where is the SD Republican Party headquarters? Because last I checked, there isn’t one anymore. Not in Pierre. Not in Sioux Falls.
- Does the SDGOP have actual employees at this point? There aren’t any “staff” noted on the website.
It really begs the question of what function the South Dakota Republican Party serves at this point? What has it become over the course of the last two years?
If the Republican State Central Committee truly believes that this is a direction that they’re happy with, then by all means they should return leadership to the hands of Eschenbaum, a former 32-year Democrat who claimed at the onset of his tenure that he didn’t “need any more money thrown to the state GOP.” How has that worked for us?
But if party leaders think we can do better than the slow desiccation of the State Republican party that we’ve watched, one where fewer and fewer South Dakotans find commonality with, they should recruit someone to lead the organization back to functionality.
I would suppose that Jimmy is looking for a Pischke endorsement to seal the deal.
Now that’s funny! Don’t care which side your on.
RLTW
If you are a retired former state legislator looking for something to do, PLEASE run for the seat. The SDGOP desperately needs someone who knows what they should be doing and has the time and energy to actually do it.
….or if you are a respectable, experienced and honorable former State of SD Constitutional Officer, former member of the US Congress, former Mayor of a major SD City, etc. Please step up, run for the state party Chairmanship and save the SD GOP!
I looked at my calendar and noted the gubernatorial debate is tonight.
In times past, even in 2020 during Covid, there were watch parties scheduled across the state. These were festive rallies to whip up enthusiasm for getting out the vote.
This year?
Is the SDGOP having a Watch Party for the general Election? I haven’t heard of one.
The party has really gone downhill since election night watch parties were all over the state like a massive zoom meeting and we could see what people were doing at the other locations . Those were fun.
Remember when they hired a bus to take people to a debate at Dakota Fest? I recall another bus which took people to see Bob Dole.
We used to have watch parties for primary election night, candidate forum and debate nights, and then Election night.
The purpose of the party is to get Republicans elected, and that means Get Out The Vote. They’re supposed to be whipping up enthusiasm for early voting right now, and that means having watch parties & rallies.
I still haven’t seen anything in the mail or on TV about voting early for the Republican slate.
The current leadership has REALLY dropped the ball.
If Eschenbaum
doesn’t want to do the job, why is he running for it?
Don’t forget, the whack jobs still hold the majority of delegates at convention.
He will be a shoe-in.
The entirety of the delegates don’t vote on this. Only the State Central Committee does. However, same problem.
Jim and his administration are an absolute embarrassment. They have taken a nationally accomplished organization, with a hard-earned reputation built over decades, and reduced it to a laughingstock. They haven’t advanced the party; they’ve devastated its credibility. The sheer entitlement and dysfunction of this administration are staggering.
Clean house. Full slate replacement. Unfortunately, I’m not sure the current composition of the state central committee will allow the necessary changeover. We need to clean house statewide. The regular joe republican spoke at the ballot box, voting for common-sense conservatives. Most don’t understand the state party composition; if they did, they would be appalled.
Jimbo has managed to do exactly what a life-long Democrat would want to do in this office–he has turned the SD GOP into an absolute shambles. The only surprising part is how much the ultra-right wing nut faction of the party has fallen for the ruse–proof positive of just how moronic this collection of imbeciles actually is.
I support Jim. Not his fault that no one gets along. He needs to run again and get new people on board to help him.
Yeah. God knows it’s not easy to rip the state’s major political party down to irrelevant nothingness to elevate the Trumper class to positions of control.
If you put this clueless turkey back into power you will deserve the next level of h-e-double-hockey-sticks he takes you down to. The big money the party used to have access to will stay parked wherever it is. Those with ears to hear, please hear this.
Tell me one thing he has done while in his position? I am not asking for much, just one thing.
it’s not his fault there has been no advertising about the fact early voting has already started? No postcards featuring all the state-wide candidates? No promotion of last night’s gubernatorial debate?
His job is to get-out-the-vote for the Republican slate and nothing is happening.
He’s doing NOTHING
This guy is doing exactly what MAGA and trump want. They don’t run stuff. they wreck stuff.
Bingo.
If you actually looked at what their political position actually are, the “woke-right” are actually closer to the DSA than MAGA. They’re on the opposite side of Trump on almost every issue.
Are they? Trump manages to be on all sides of an issue, when he bothers to even consider a position at all. MAGA then follows his lead, and reverse engineer their beliefs to fit whatever gobbledygook Pres. Trump has thrown out (probably something containing: like never before, golden age, tears in their eyes, sir, Sleepy Joe). Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.
blah blah blah
Trump is evil
Trump’s diplomatic agenda had nothing to do with a flyDubai aircraft full of Israeli passengers being allowed to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, and they were treated well on arrival.
Nothing at all.
There are a lot of things rather miraculous about what happened there and that was just one of them
And those Abraham Accords? Nah, nothing to see there.
Trump Trump Trump boo-hoo-hoo.
I wonder what his official stance is on data centers? Also i wonder if he realizes. That every time they make one of those ai posts on the SDGOP Facebook page. That they are creating demand for more data centers.
I don’t pay much attention to Eschenbaum, but I can only assume he opposes data cetners, since Trump stongly supports them.
Yet, some idiots keep claiming Eschenbaum and his crew are MAGA.
I came back in just to see if Anonymous at 11:01 PM had responded to Anonymous @ 7:51 AM.
Tell us one thing Eschenbaum has done.
We are still waiting
I’ll check back in another 24 hours or so
SDGOP and all the county parties are irrelevant and overrun by unqualified, ignorant boobs. I sincerely hope the legislature moves all the constitutional offices to the primary and gets rid of the precinct committee people. I would think there’s an appetite for it after what Pischke is accused of doing and how easy it is to commit fraud. But then again, what is SD Canvassing concerned about? Tabulators and a bunch of geriatrics hand counting ballots. This is the reality in which we live. God help us all.