Received this letter from “Lee Goodman – Chairman of the Federal Election Commission,” with a “Notice of information regarding Attorney General candidate Lance Russell.”

But it wasn’t from the FEC. It was a campaign letter from a couple of Washington, DC area attorneys.

Lawyer Letter for Lance Russell by Pat Powers on Scribd

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the endorsement.. but it’s not the kind of thing I’d want to end a mail campaign on myself.

A quick early update from GOP State Convention – Registration is up and running:

Attorney General Jackley Announces Landmark Supreme Court Decision in Favor of South Dakota and Mainstreet Business 

PIERRE, S.D. –      Attorney General Marty Jackley announced today the United States Supreme Court has overruled the physical presence requirement in State of South Dakota v. Wayfair, Overstock and Newegg.

“Today’s landmark decision is a win for South Dakota and for Main Street businesses across America that will now have a level playing field and tax fairness,” said Jackley.

In his opening remarks to the United States Supreme Court Justices, Attorney General Jackley argued:

“There are two very significant consequences brought about by Quill: First, our states are losing massive sales tax revenues that we need for education, healthcare, and infrastructure. Second, our small businesses on Main Street are being harmed because of the unlevel playing field created by Quill, where out-of- state remote sellers are given a price advantage.”

Transcript of Oral Argument at 3, South Dakota v. Wayfair, Overstock and Newegg,

South Dakota passed a law in 2016 that would require out-of-state retailers to collect and remit sales tax similar to in-state retailers. The law applies to out-of-state retailers if they have more than $100,000 in sales or complete more than 200 transactions per year within South Dakota.

Given the controlling precedent of Quill, on October 2, 2017, the Attorney General’s Office filed a petition for certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the South Dakota Supreme Court decision in State of South Dakota v. Wayfair, Overstock and Newegg.

In Quill, the U.S. Supreme Court required that a retailer have a “physical presence” within a state before a seller can be obligated to collect and remit that state’s sales taxes on purchases delivered into the state. None of this would be possible without the support of 41 Attorneys General, the President, the South Dakota Retailers Association, education leaders, and the business community.

-30-

From the Hill:

In a 5-4 ruling, the court overturned a 1992 court precedent barring states from requiring businesses that have no physical presence in the state to collect their sales taxes.

Delivering the opinion of the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the physical presence rule in that former case is unsound and incorrect.

Read it here.

More to come!

I’m hearing again this morning that Rep. Dan Kaiser is telling those close to him that he is refusing and refuting the crazy trying to promote him as a candidate.

The word passed on to me was flat out that “Kaiser wouldn’t be accepting any nominations.”  Period.

At this point, I don’t think there’s anything left but narcissism on the part of the people trying to gin up press about it, because it sure isn’t about electing someone who is refusing it

KELO Radio has an article posted to their web site which puts the attacks by Stace Nelson on Kristi Noem’s choice for Lt. Governor in their proper light. Crazy.

…brewing behind the scenes is a movement to draft state Rep. Dan Kaiser of Aberdeen. A group called SHE Political Action Committee has sent out a mailer to GOP delegates lauding Kaiser. A number of current and former Republican state legislators have also expressed their support for Kaiser’s nomination.

Kaiser posted on his Facebook page for his unsuccessful run for Brown County Sheriff on June 14 that he wasn’t being considered for the position. That was six days before Noem’s announcement of Rhoden.

and..

However, according to state Sen. Stace Nelson from Fulda, he says he wants Kaiser or another conservative Republican to be Noem’s running mate.

“With the groundswell of conservative South Dakotans we’ve been able to get recruited to go to the convention, you’re seeing the establishment do everything they can to thwart that,” Nelson said.

and…

However, long-time legislator Sen. Lee Schoenbeck from Watertown doesn’t see the effort to replace Rhoden on the ticket as viable.

“There’s a difference between conservative and crazy and those people are just crazy,” Schoenbeck told KXLG Radio.

Read it all here.

“There’s a difference between conservative and crazy and those people are just crazy,”   I think that sums up Nelson’s attacks on Rhoden pretty succinctly.

Republican Delegates are going to find themselves spending a lot of time on Saturday casing unanimous ballots for candidates who are the sole candidates for many of the offices up for nomination.  But one race has become more hotly contested over the past several months, and it’s all coming to a head with the vote to finally nominate the Republican candidate for Attorney General.

What’s the lay of the land at this point?

Let me preface this by noting that ALL of them would do a good job representing the South Dakota Republican Party. I do like them all. But, from talking to delegates and activists in the field, and sticking my finger in the wind to take a temperature, here’s my best guesstimate of the their odds in capturing the nomination as the GOP Convention commences.

THE CANDIDATES:

Lawrence County States Attorney John Fitzgerald has a long record as a State’s Attorney.  As noted on his web site, “John was the Butte County State’s Attorney from 1981-1995 and a Deputy State’s Attorney in Lawrence County from 1990-1995. In 1995 John became the Lawrence County State’s Attorney and has been serving Lawrence County ever since.”  He’s been living and breathing the job of prosecutor for a long, long time.

However, earning the job of Attorney General is about more than just being a prosecutor. You’re out raising the money. You’re out being the face of your campaign, and you’re going to be out on the campaign trail for several months convincing South Dakotans that you’re the one for the job.

In the run up to the Pre-primary report GOP Convention, Fitzgerald raised the least of any of the candidates, and loaned his campaign $10,000 to help get through to this weekend.

In talking with delegates across the state, Fitzgerald has his supporters, but in handicapping the race, almost without fail, most I’ve talked to look at the race being decided in 2 votes.

And while it’s entirely possible that my universe is too limited, in most cases Fitzgerald is widely viewed as being the one who will be dropped after the first vote.  That gives him a hard path to swing the number of delegates he needs to turn that around.

There are some who are committed to his experience, and they’ll work like a dog for him at convention. But he’s got a long way to go, and a lot of people to convince to move the needle in 3 days.

Lance Russell is the second of the two candidates who have a record in being elected as State’s Attorney.  Clicking over to his web site, you’ll see that Lance was elected as the Fall River County State’s Attorney where “he served in that role for eight years,” before he was “elected to the South Dakota House of Representatives as the District 30 Representative, where he served until 2016 when he was elected as the District 30 Senator.”

Lance is an outstanding retail campaigner, and has been able to win past elections through sheer will if necessary. He’s taken the bark off of opponents, and beaten them handily.  He’s a former Executive Director for the SDGOP, cut his teeth working on the Timmer for Congress Campaign, etc. He knows his politics. He has many friends in political circles.

But there’s also a contrarian streak in Lance that has caused him to butt heads with people in his home community, the legal community at large, and in the Legislature.  And while he might have friends willing to go to the mat for him, he has some opponents who are equally committed against him.

While he has the endorsement from Brock Greenfield to boast of, he also has endorsers such as Gordon Howie or Stace Nelson. Nelson’s endorsement might be problematic, given his attacks on Kristi Noem’s choice for Lt. Governor.

Also handicapping Lance in the Republican AG race has been the remoteness of his Hot Springs home.  I’ve heard on a couple of occasions from delegates that they were expecting to meet with Lance, and not get a telephone call from a hired minion.  That remoteness is the enemy of a retail politician like Lance.

Lance raised over $23,000 in the run up to the primary election, leaving him over 8k to come into the convention race with.

Lance’s campaign has been mail-bombing delegates for the last month or so in a hard last minute push to this weekend’s vote, so it’s doubtful he lacks name ID.

The question now that’s he’s face to face whether he can charm the delegates on location enough to swing the odds in his favor by Saturday.

Jason Ravnsborg has been a ubiquitous fixture at Republican events in every county since he ran unsuccessfully for the United State’s Senate in 2014.  One of the fateful decisions that Ravnsborg made in that election was to reject a hard negative ad against Mike Rounds that advisors were demanding he run. Ravnsborg’s solution was to fire the advisers. He lost the election, but like Larry Rhoden, one of his other opponents who lost to Rounds, Jason has lived to come back to the statewide stage in 2018, and run for the nomination for Attorney General.

While Ravnsborg has not served as a State’s Attorney (which his opponents chide him for) he has experience in civil trials, criminal trials, and has been working as an assistant State’s Attorney in Union County.   And one thing that Ravnsborg doesn’t talk about on the stump, possibly due to campaign related regulations that affect him, is his ongoing service in the Military Reserves.

As noted on his website, Jason is “a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army Reserves and has been deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Germany during his military career. He has been awarded the Bronze Star along with many other awards and has been honored for his service by Congress. Jason has had four company commands and currently serves as a battalion commander overseeing approximately 1,000 soldiers in South Dakota and Nebraska.”   While not necessarily having the prosecutorial experience of his opponents, he makes up for it in his administrative experience, which is a large part of the job of AG.   AG’s hire people to prosecute. But they are looked to directly administer. And I don’t think you get promoted to Lt. Col by being a slouch.

Did I mention that Ravnsborg was a ubiquitous fixture at Republican events in every county, especially the events East River? Jason has been on the campaign trail for quite some time, and has likely met every delegate who will be attending the convention.  And that accounts for a massive part of his momentum coming into the campaign. Delegates recognize Jason Ravnsborg has been putting in the work for quite some time. And that makes for a strong candidate in the fall.

Ravnsborg has also been the top money raiser in the run up to the convention. That doesn’t hurt his chances, either.

Without exception, those that I’ve talked to put Ravnsborg into the top two of the candidates who will make it to a second vote, with some handicapping him as having a significant advantage, due to large contingents in large counties siding with him.

However….

THE CAVEATS:

There’s an old saying when it comes to delegates. Convention Delegates are with a candidate 100%. Until they’re not.

Delegates are a lot like legislators during the session. You have those who will stick with you until the bitter end. You have those who will take convincing to come with you. You have those who blow with the wind. And you have those who will vote depending on the last person who talks to them.  There’s no exact science except to do your best to turn out your voters, and to identify those who haven’t committed yet.

By all accounts, I’m hearing there may be as many as 20% of the delegates who have not made up their mind yet.  Depending on where they’re from, that might be enough to affect a race.

And it might also hinge on who survives the first vote. Sometimes candidates can capture a first vote, but promises might be out the window on the second vote, and it might depends on who survives the first vote to winnow the field.  The defeated candidate’s votes are going to go somewhere… And it might not be to the winner in the first round.

So, that’s my take on it. Stay tuned for updates – I’ll be on location starting tomorrow night!!

The Billie Sutton for Governor campaign responded to the announcement of Larry Rhoden as GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Kristi Noem’s running mate today. Or at least, they responded weakly:

It’s no surprise that a member of the Washington DC political establishment selected a state government insider as a running mate. All South Dakota will get from the Congresswoman’s ticket is more of the same: more of the same Pierre insiders, more of the same Washington-style politics, and more of the same old business-as-usual. Billie Sutton is the only candidate for Governor who will clean up state government, buck the status quo in the state capitol and restore trust in government by listening to the people.

Read that here.

What intern boilerplated that one? Washington this, and political insider that...  I had given the Sutton campaign more credit for authenticity, but apparently they’re out to prove people who assume that as wrong.

The unsettling conclusion for the Sutton campaign is that they are finding themselves up against a ticket that “out-Billies Billie,” with both members of the GOP ticket coming from the community of the state’s farmers & ranchers.

While Sutton decided to try to make a predictable grab for cash with his Republican Lt. Governor’s Sioux Falls money connections, by picking Rhoden, Kristi Noem managed to outflank Sutton on his agricultural base, giving voters the first ticket since the Gov/Lt started running as a team that features two candidates who are both primarily farmers or ranchers. (H/T TVH).

With his choice of Michelle Lavalle as evidence of the fact, Sutton needed to reach out to Republican voters to try to expand from Democrats’ weak numbers to overcome the GOP’s strong advantage.  What they didn’t count on was Noem making a more unconventional choice, and having Noem, a farmer, pair with Rhoden, a rancher, which automatically takes a deep dig into Sutton’s main base of support.

Kristi Noem’s conservative Republican base isn’t going to defect from her because the GOP base is primarily based on values.  Sutton has always tried to identify himself as more Ag than “Democrat liberal ideological icon.”  When you compare the two, I don’t think that Sutton’s Ag base has the Noem base’s stick-to-itiveness, simply because we’re a Republican majority state, the Ag community is fairly conservative to start, and they’re happy to vote GOP as long as they don’t have a reason to stay away.

In politics, the rule in counting votes is to make sure you hold your base. That just became a lot more tenuous for the Sutton camp, because the Noem/Rhoden camp might look a lot more attractive to his Ag voters about now.

From my mailbox:

Register today – and I’ll see you there tomorrow night!

Karl Adam, Shawn Rost, Steve Bumann and Dave Rozenboom Elected as South Dakota Bankers Association 2018-2019 Officers

PIERRE, S.D.–The South Dakota Bankers Association (SDBA), the professional and trade association for South Dakota’s financial services industry, recently elected officers for its 2018-2019 Board of Directors. The SDBA is honored to have the following individuals serve as officers:

• Chairman: Karl Adam, Market President, First Dakota National Bank, Pierre
• Chairman-Elect: Shawn Rost, South Dakota Market President, First Interstate Bank, Rapid City
• Vice Chairman: Steve Bumann, CFO, BankWest, Inc., Pierre
• Immediate Past Chairman: Dave Rozenboom, President, First PREMIER Bank, Sioux Falls

The official election took place at the Annual Convention of the South Dakota Bankers Association, held jointly with the North Dakota Bankers Association, June 10-12 in Fargo. The term for the new officers is effective now through next year’s annual convention in June.

Chairman Karl Adam

Karl Adam began his banking career with Dakota State Bank, Blunt, in 1995, as a management trainee and later served as president. Adam joined First Dakota National Bank in 2016 and serves as market president in Pierre.

In addition to serving on the SDBA Board of Directors, Adam has served on the South Dakota Bankers Foundation Board of Directors and the South Dakota Bankers Insurance & Services Board of Directors. He has served as a trustee for the Pierre Rawlins Municipal Library Board including serving as its president, was a member of the St. Mary’s Foundation Board of Directors, the South Dakota Housing Development Authority and South Dakota Republican Party chairman from 2006-2008. Adam currently serves as a director on the South Dakota Community Foundation Board and co-chairs, with his wife Joan, the fundraising campaign for the new Helmsley Cancer Center to be located within the Avera Cancer Institute at Avera St. Mary’s Hospital in Pierre.

Adam and his wife, Joan, have been married for 29 years. They have five children: Katherine Danforth and son-in-law Eric Danforth, Conrad (22), Jack (19), and Phillip and Paul (16).

Chairman-Elect Shawn Rost

Shawn Rost is the South Dakota market president for First Interstate Bank. Although currently living in Rapid City, he has deep roots in the northern Black Hills. Upon graduation from Black Hills State University, he was hired as a consumer loan officer in Spearfish. From there, Rost was named the Deadwood branch president and then the Sturgis branch and Northern Hills market president. He was promoted to his current position in 2016.

Rost has been on the SDBA board of directors for the past four years. He is passionate about SDBA advocacy efforts and the recent regulatory changes. Rost has also served on the executive boards of many nonprofit organizations, including the Northern Hills Training Center in Spearfish, the Deadwood Chamber of Commerce, Neighbor Works Dakota Home Resources and Deadwood Economic Development.

Rost and his wife, Susan, enjoy traveling and spending time with their three sons. Hunter is a 2017 graduate of the University of Wyoming, Tanner is a senior at Arizona State University, and Traven is a third grader in Rapid City.

Vice Chairman Steve Bumann

Steve Bumann is the CFO for BankWest, Inc. in Pierre. He began his employment with BankWest as vice president of finance in 1984. He has worked in BankWest’s finance department for his entire 34-year banking career. Prior to joining BankWest, Bumann worked for the Department of Legislative Audit and a local Pierre CPA firm. Bumann graduated from the University of South Dakota in 1975 with a BS in accounting and passed the CPA exam in 1977.

Bumann is currently a member director for South Dakota on the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines Board. He is also on the Elder Board of his local church. His past service includes seven years on the Pierre School Board, a term on the South Dakota Retirement System Board of Trustees as the school board representative and he is a past president of the Pierre Area Chamber of Commerce.

Bumann and his wife, Deb, who will be married for 35 years in July, have four adult children and currently three grandchildren. Aaron and his wife Erin are in Kansas City; Michael and his wife Kimmie will be heading back to China in August; Brian is in Minneapolis; and Elizabeth and her husband Chris are in Rapid City.

Immediate Past Chairman Dave Rozenboom

Dave Rozenboom is the president of First PREMIER Bank in Sioux Falls since 2011. First PREMIER Bank is a full-service community bank with $1.7 billion in assets and 18 locations in South Dakota. Prior to joining First PREMIER, Rozenboom had a 26-year career with U.S. Bank, where he served as regional president of eastern South Dakota and northwest Iowa from 2001-2011.

Rozenboom continues to be active in leadership roles in a number of community organizations. He is the current chair of the Forward Sioux Falls Joint Venture Management Committee. He has also served as the board chair for Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce, Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center, Sioux Falls Christian Schools and Junior Achievement of South Dakota.

Rozenboom and his wife, Tammy, have been married for 34 years. They have four children: Katie (husband Josh), Heidi (husband Jon), Mike, and Brett (wife Shelby), along with three grandchildren.