Looks like someone got ahold of a letter before I did. As teased earlier today, Mark Mickelson has decided to take a pass on running for Governor:

Mark Mickelson, the Sioux Falls lawmaker who has been considered a favorite to be the state’s next governor, says he has decided not to run for the job when it’s open in 2018.

Mickelson, 50, had been actively fundraising and gearing up against potential GOP primary rivals, raising about $1 million for the campaign. But the commitment it takes to run a large statewide race was taking him away from his wife and three boys, who range in age from 17 to 13.

and..

Mickelson notified his supporters with letters and phone calls this week. He said he will return money to donors.

Read it all here.

In the aftermath of Tuesdays’ election, Todd Epp at KELO AM Radio received a copy of Ann Tornberg’s ridiculous self-congratulatory letter to Democrats about how great of a job they did this past year. And he wasn’t buying any of it:

..don’t get me started about the South Dakota Democratic Party.

They issued a release yesterday saying how wonderful they were and their candidates were, though they got their butts handed to them. There are now fewer Democrats in the state legislature since 1954.

1954. Let that sink in. Eisenhower was President. Cars had fins. Telephones were the size of Volkswagens.

State Democratic chair Ann Tornberg and executive director Susan Jones Pranger instead should have done the honorable thing and resigned. If the state Democratic Party were an actual, functioning business or non-profit, everyone associated with this debacle would be on the street.

The state Democratic Party lost because they have no plan for voter registration. They lost because they have no plan to recruit candidates. They lost because they are beholden to the South Dakota Farmers Union, which has its own ongoing issues with its own members and transparency. They lost because they did not have a message that resonates with regular, hardworking South Dakotans.

Read it here.

I think that sums it up well. The Democrats lost because they really don’t have a party to support their “impressive slate of legislative candidates” as Ann called them. Instead, they recruited them and left them to twist in the wind.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m ok with that. But it does seem like a crappy thing to do to someone you talked into being a candidate.

The world of GOP political gossip is highly charged at the moment, with multiple sources noting that an announcement in the 2018 GOP race for Governor is forthcoming, possibly as soon as today.

While some are speculating that someone is going to announce that they’re in, the more prevalent rumor is that an announcement may be forthcoming that someone is getting out. But again, it’s all a rumor at this point.

If one of the major players in the GOP Hunt for Governor decides to take a pass, it opens up what has generally been a closed contest, and might entice others to dip their toes in the water in an exploratory effort.

Hang on for more.

An acquaintance sent this over to me, and I have to ask if Ann Tornberg is talking about the election we had last night, because her enthusiasm seems a bit misplaced.

Begin forwarded message:

From: “Ann Tornberg” <info@sddp.org>
Date: November 9, 2016 at 3:08:06 PM CST
To: 
Subject: Thank you
Reply-To: info@sddp.org

Thank you. 

For all your hard work, for all the time you’ve committed, for the hard-earned money you have donated, and for reading all these emails, to support South Dakota Democrats up and down the ballot – thank you, from the bottom of my heart. 

Because of your hard work, we were able to defeat Referred Law 19, the incumbent protection plan, and Referred Law 20, which would have lowered the minimum wage for young workers. Once again, Democrats showed that when our ideas are on the ballot, the people of South Dakota agree.  

Because of your hard work, our statewide candidates – U.S. Senate Candidate Jay Williams, U.S. House Candidate Paula Hawks, and Public Utilities Commission Candidate Henry Red Cloud were able to run great campaigns. Running against well-funded political insiders like John Thune, Kristi Noem, and Chris Nelson is a tall challenge, but our candidates ran smart, energetic campaigns and raised some very important issues. They, and all Democrats, can be proud of the races they ran. 

Because of your hard work months before the election, Democrats had an impressive slate of legislative candidates including a Grammy nominated artist, an escaped hostage of Saddam Hussein, a former gubernatorial cabinet member, along with teachers, health care providers, firefighters, farmers, lawyers, and business leaders. These candidates were moved to run to provide balance and accountability in state government, and Democrats remain committed to that cause. The Democrats who were elected to the legislature are ready to work across the aisle for the betterment of all South Dakotans.

Last night didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to, and we lost some tough races in South Dakota and around the country. But Democrats will continue to fight to move our state and nation forward and to promote our shared values of rewarding hard work, investing in our children, advancing inclusion and empowerment of others, and expanding opportunity for all. 

Today we begin the fight for 2018. We must build to make gains in the State Legislature, to elect Democrats to state constitutional offices, to the Governor’s office, and to take back South Dakota’s U.S. House seat.

Thanks again for all your hard work and dedication.

Sincerely,

Ann Tornberg
South Dakota Democratic Party Chair

She left out the part about all these candidates getting their butts kicked.

I agree the Democrat party must build, but for about the last decade that hasn’t happened. And Tornberg took them the farthest they’ve been down in the hole in over 50 years.

Will they “build?” Sure. You bet. Just don’t hold your breath waiting for it to happen. I’m not sure why 2018 would be any different than the many years that have preceded it for quite a while.

So, about those South Dakota Democrats…

Do you realize that in the Senate, they did not win a single, solitary race. Only uncontested ones. And in the House of Representatives, of the ten seats they won, six were uncontested, 2 were contested against Independents, and only two wins out of 70 seats – one in D17 (Ray Ring over Debbie Pease), and one in D25 (Dan Ahlers over Roger Hunt) were head to head runs against Republicans.

Think about that.

The Democrat party was only able to put together legitimate head to head victories over Republicans in only 2 out of 105 seats.  That’s just staggering for a political party who, not much more than 20 years ago in the 1992 election was able to capture a majority in the State Senate.

The intervening years have not been kind to the opposition, but in many cases, they’ve brought it onto themselves.

As opposed to recruiting and running a full slate of candidates, they’ve relied on the stopgap placeholder to put a warm body into candidate positions with hopes of filling it later, in all too many instances.

As opposed to trying to appeal to the middle in center-right to conservative South Dakota, they keep pushing farther and farther left. When you bring in candidates for the head of your ticket who want to raise taxes all over the board and tell us we need to stop oil production, farmers who might possibly be sympathetic to your cause are just going to shake their head and pull the lever for the GOP that much more earnestly.

As opposed to party building, the Democrats have fallen into this trap of working ballot issues, thinking that they’re going to build their potential mailing lists, and the electorate is going to reward them for their ideas they can’t get pushed through during session.

Now that they’re at their lowest point of elected officials IN OVER 50 YEARS (since ’53), you would think that maybe they would get the hint that their path which meanders towards extinction isn’t working for them anymore.

But somehow, I just don’t think they get it.

Expanding on the thoughts in the prior post about Initiated Measure 22, “a measure to revise state campaign finance and lobbying laws, create a publicly funded campaign finance program, create an ethics commission and appropriate funds…”

The premise of the measure was that allegedly Pierre is roiling in corruption. (Which we all know to be utter BS). Yet, at the same time, the majority Republicans were not just elected, but we had our numbers strengthened.

What’s the message we should take from that?

Last night was one of the wildest rides I can remember in a while. As a Republican, I felt good about going into election night… and I felt even better this morning when I saw that the GOP actually picked up seats. I’ve always operated under the assumption that political balance is a pendulum, and it would swing back to fewer Republicans, so it’s important to work to create a bulwark against that.

Except, one factor I have forgotten to take into account is the South Dakota Democrat Party giving up any illusion of running candidates for office. And so the new normal is 10-15 House members, and 5-10 Senators. The question for the GOP is whether they’re able to keep Democrat numbers down, and hold the caucus together.

What was more in doubt last night were the ballot issues, and we ended up with some surprising results.

AMENDMENT R – The Tech School change fared more poorly than a measure with no true opposition should, although it still won at 50.6% to 49.4%

AMENDMENT S, or Marsy’s Law won handily on a 60-40% basis. Call it the Kelsey Grammer effect. It was a good ad.

AMENDMENT T for redistricting, which I had pegged as winning, lost 57-43%. It had only token opposition, but maybe that’s all it needed.

AMENDMENT U, placing statutory interest rates for Loans into the constitution fared poorly, losing 63-37%

AMENDMENT V which hid party label on the ballot went down 55-45%.

INITIATED MEASURE 21 was a blowout at 76%-24%, placing maximum finance charges on certain licensed money lenders. This was a bit surprising to me, as South Dakotans aren’t apt to ban entire industries, but apparently, they are.

An even bigger surprise is INITIATED MEASURE 22, which creates a publicly funded campaign finance program, won 52-48%. Of the three measures coming from Rick Weiland, this and Amendment V had the fiercest and most direct opposition, and most of us thought T would be the one to pass, not IM22.

Before it’s implemented, I suspect IM22’s public campaign component will face opposition and removal. It’s kind of hard to even think of programs such as Medicaid expansion when $12-50 million is stripped from the budget for politician’s political campaigns…. But, we’ll see.

INITIATED MEASURE 23 to allow Unions to force membership fees went down hard. 80-20%.

And no one cared about the other two on the ballot by this point, so expectedly Referred Law 19 & Referred Law 20 both lost.

What are your thoughts on these ballot issues?