Press Release: Union County Republican Party Elects County Leadership

Press Release – 1/31/2023
Union County Republican Party Elects County Leadership

ELK POINT, SD: Members of the Union County Republican Party gathered last week to elect their Executive Board in Elk Point. Officers elected were Dan Lederman of Dakota Dunes for County Chair, Mary Shuey of Wynstone for County Vice Chair, Mike Dailey of Jefferson for County GOP Treasurer, Jerry Miller of Burbank for County GOP Secretary and Dirk and Bonnie Lohry of McCook Lake for State Committeeman and State Committeewoman.

Also discussed at the meeting was a recap of the 2022 Election which continued Republican dominance in South Dakota politics. The GOP elected all statewide candidates for the seventh straight election cycle and returned a ninety percent supermajority to the legislature. Union County has Republicans in every office except for Auditor. Legislative seats for the newly formed District 17 which includes the southern half of Union County and Clay County, elected Republicans Bill Shorma of Dakota Dunes and Chris Kassin of Vermillion as State House Representatives and Sydney Davis of Burbank as State Senator.

If anyone is interested in learning more about the Union County Republican Party please contact Dan Lederman at dan@sdgop.com.

From Twitter – Senator Erin Tobin on updating State Constitution to reflect the 19th Amendment.

Flags at Half-Staff at State Capitol in Honor of Former State Representative and State Court Judge John Jones

Flags at Half-Staff at State Capitol in Honor of Former State Representative and State Court Judge John Jones

PIERRE, S.D. – Today, Governor Kristi Noem ordered that flags be flown at half-staff at the State Capitol from sunrise until sunset on Monday, February 6th, 2023, in honor of former state Representative and state court Judge John Jones. He served in the South Dakota State Legislature from 1956-1960.

Funeral services for former Rep. Jones will take place at 9:30 am on February 6th, 2023 at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, 909 W 33rd St, Sioux Falls, SD.

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Thune: Security and Humanitarian Crisis at the Southern Border Cannot Be Ignored

Thune: Security and Humanitarian Crisis at the Southern Border Cannot Be Ignored

“Encouraging illegal immigration, as the president’s policies have done, is the very opposite of compassionate and humane.”

Click here or on the picture above to watch the video.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) today discussed how the Biden administration’s open-border policies have helped enable the worst border crisis in our nation’s history. Thune noted that the southern border crisis is impacting communities all across the country, including those in South Dakota that are dealing with fentanyl that has been trafficked across the border from Mexico.

Julie Frye-Mueller Scandal: Argus sanitizing allegations against Senator Julie Frye-Mueller. Censure is Not Enough, and what about JFM’s husband?

The State Senate is working through their legislative load in week 4, but there’s a specter over everything that they are doing. The absolute freak-show that was dropped in the legislature’s lap last week when State Senator Julie Frye Mueller was suddenly and mysteriously suspended of all duties by the State Senate, leaving many to ask “why?” “what did she do?” with only the sketchiest of reports that it involved Senator Frye Mueller harassing an employee of the legislative research council about “private maternal matters, including childhood vaccines and breastfeeding.”

Understandably, given that Frye-Mueller was a legislator, and the LRC works for legislators, the Senate removed her from the situation with a strong vote. But there was enough wiggle room and ambiguity that Frye-Mueller and her political allies went on the attack, spending the weekend trying to portray her victimhood, culminating with a “woe is me” “I don’t know what I did wrong” press conference in an attempt to garner sympathy from the public.

But what Mueller didn’t count on was the fact that after they redacted some materials, the Senate was willing to release the statement which started all of this, to the public’s horror. It’s horrifying and graphic. So much so that the squeamish Argus Leader Argus will give a hint to the crazy, but won’t print the bad parts.

After the discussion about the bill, Sen. Frye-Mueller asked the staffer about her baby and asked if the infant was vaccinated, according to the complaint. When the staffer answered yes, Frye-Mueller said vaccinations could cause issues such as Down syndrome or autism.

and..

Frye-Mueller then went on to tell the staffer, “he will die from those vaccines,” according to the complaint.

The discussion then moved from vaccines to breastfeeding, according to the complaint. The staffer said she was formula feeding her child that then led Frye-Mueller to give an explicit description of how to have milk come in.

Read the corporate sanitized version here.

So much for the Argus’ milquetoast account of the matter.  Because it sanitizes the accusation, and strips it of any moral call for justice for the victim.  Thankfully, the State Senate believes in open government, and lays it out there, warts and all:

After the discussion on the bill was finished, Senator Frye-Mueller asked, “how is baby?” I answered that he was doing well. Senator Frye-Mueller proceeded to ask, “did you vaccinate?”. I told her, “Yes.” Without allowing me to elaborate further, she proceeded to point her finger at me and aggressively say that this will cause him issues. She said my baby, “could get down syndrome, or autism.” She further went on to say that “he will die from those vaccines.”

She talked about the World Health Organization (WHO) and a video released by WHO that that confirmed that vaccinating babies is wrong and said that “we are guinea pigs for big pharma.” She further went on to say that God gives babies immunity and that, “you are taking away God’s gift of immunity from your son.”. During this time, she then asked if I was breastfeeding my baby. I told her “No, I am formula feeding, but I wish I could have.”

I was told by Senator Frye-Mueller that my husband could “suck on my breasts” to get milk to come in. She indicated, “a good time for that is at night.” She proceeded to provide hand gestures to her chest area and motion to her husband to see if he agreed. He smiled and nodded.

Senator Frye-Mueller preceded to get even more emotional and aggressive with me. She continued to point her finger at me with tears in her eyes saying repeatedly, “you can’t vaccinate your child anymore.” She knew of a set of twins that got vaccinated and “came out completely different”. She asked, “do you want that to happen to your son?”

Read the redacted employee statement here.

According to an account, the Legislative employee and new mother was subjected to a barrage of the worst, long-debunked pile of vaccination crazy from the internet, directed at her from a superior as if it was gospel, intimating she might be killing her child.

And far, far worse, she starts going on about breastfeeding in a tremendously inappropriate way forced on her by a work superior, with the work superior’s husband leering.

This wasn’t advice from one mother to another.  The level of abuse to the employee is unlike anything ever heard in the halls of the legislature, and done so with the attendance and tacit approval of Frye Mueller’s husband for all of it.

I was in the censure court when the charges were originally announced. Now that the details are out, if the Senate chose to expel her, I’m easily good with that. South Dakota would be far better off getting rid of Frye-Mueller. And at this point, with the information out, I’m disappointed that the Senate has so far left Mueller’s husband untouched for his role in this matter.

Given his part in this event, the Senate needs to ban JFM’s husband, Mike Mueller, from legislative offices, committee rooms, and keep him away from the employees given the account from the employee making the complaint.

The new boss doesn’t want the old boss. But the new boss sure wants the product of the old boss’ hard work.

I’d heard about this for several weeks now, and it seems to be a bit of a lesson for those in the hard right of the GOP who want to turn out people who have worked to build the party for years.

You can certainly up-end things. But, there’s always a possibility that those that are tossed out might decide that they can go do their own thing. And the new people will have to start from scratch:

According to pre-election disclosures from last October, the county party held $15,530 in net assets, largely earned through small-dollar direct contributions and proceeds from party functions such as the annual Lincoln Day Dinner.

On Dec. 7, Duane “Butch” Becker, the outgoing treasurer, used these assets to write a check for $12,000 to the District 18 Republican Political Action Committee, an organization formed one week earlier by three now-former members of the Yankton County GOP’s executive board: Becker, Vice Chair Roger Meyer and State Committeeman Greg Adamson.

“We’ve had no cooperation. They haven’t given us anything. They are not giving us past minutes, email addresses, the Facebook account. They’re not helping with the transition whatsoever,” Stacey Nickels, the newly elected treasurer, told Forum News Service. “They took our money and ran.”

Read the entire story here.

I notice how the new committee members are howling to the press that “They took our money and ran.”  Well, up until the new committee took office, arguably, “they” very possibly had every right as the committee as an organization to do so.  For a group that’s coming in, they were very happy to push the existing committee (a.k.a. “they”) out, until they found that the new group possibly didn’t get the benefit of the finds that “they” raised.

That’s the problem. Too much of “us” and “them” going on within the GOP when everyone’s goal should be to build the organization, and not simply be about who is in charge, so they can push the others out of the big tent. We’ve heard it for quite a while from the hard right wing of the party, on how once they’re in charge all the RINO’s and fake Republicans are going by the wayside.   And as they’ve taken the leadership in a few County organizations, they’re finding that mmmmmaybe they need some of the skills, knowledge and resources the previous group built along the way.

Such as in Minnehaha County. They’re arguably as hard-right as Republican County organizations come. Last time we had this far right of an organization, it was Lora Hubbel in charge of the group. And they just collapsed in terms of their ability to raise funds and prestige in the community. They claimed that they wanted to work on fundraising in one breath, yet in literally the next the new chair Shawn Tornow is attacking the State GOP Chair for attending to a sick child during a vote.

Maybe they’ll figure it out. Maybe they won’t.

But hopefully they haven’t cost the GOP too many elections in the meantime.

You guys are killing me… Had to boost my computing capacity over the JFM traffic

Ugh. Worst part of having to do your own tech work.  You guys are killing me, as everyone tries to keep up on the JFM accusations.

Because seriously. This is not the topic anyone was expecting for the middle of the legislative session. Good God.

I literally had to double the number of CPU’s on the cloud server, and increase my storage to handle all the traffic being thrown at the website over the Julie Frye Mueller scandal.

Hopefully that solves some of the problem of the website going up and down.

Called that one! Former State Rep. Haugaard representing Senator Julie Frye Mueller. Lawsuit filed in federal court.

I called that one. Unsuccessful Republican Primary Candidate for Governor Steve Haugaard is representing Julie Frye Mueller in bringing a lawsuit against the State Senate to fight her expulsion from that body for her actions with an employee of the Legislative Research Council: