Senate Bill 40 – to change how constitutional officers are selected – has passed on a close 18-16 vote in the State Senate, as it moves over to the House for further consideration.
I’ll post the vote when it is available.
39 thoughts on “Senate Bill 40 passes on an 18 – 16 vote”
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Little too excited? Typing errors galore this time.
Phone blowing up.. didn’t catch the mis-keys.
Such a good move for the people of South Dakota!
I have a dream, that someday a state party convention will be a great gathering at which all the candidates have already been selected in a primary, and all the newly elected precinct committee men and women will gather to meet the candidates they will be spending the next four months enthusiastically working for, whether they voted for them in the primary or not. They can go through all the hospitality suites collecting t-shirts, fliers, bumper stickers, and yard signs, all the stuff they will need to do the work they signed up for, and everybody will enjoy great food and entertainment and the party will present a united front to the public.
No need for state conventions
no need for national conventions either, but as Travis Kelce says, you gotta fight for your right to party!
You mean all eight of the delegates after this passes, lol. I’d venture to guess — at least nowadays — two-thirds of precinct committee people are there simply because someone recruited them to come vote for somebody. Soon enough, Pat won’t be making fun of Libertarians having a convention at Pizza Ranch because the GOP will be doing the same. That is, if it’s the part of the party that isn’t banned from Pizza Ranch. 🤣
8 delegates who all support the full slate of Republican candidates would be preferable to 600 with 275 of them going on record as opposed to the full slate.
Personally I’d take half of 600 over 8. People don’t all agree. That’s why we vote.
There you go again being funny.
Why are they making Republicans run the gauntlet getting signatures, raising and spending money and then saying oh yeah we will let dems still play in the general election by nominating last minute at convention if they don’t have a primary candidate?
So 4 GOP AG candidates work their tales off only to potentially face a strong dem if a weak gop candidate emerges as the nominee?
Terrible amendment.
Now GOP go raise the money again for a general because the dems nominated at convention.
Monae Johnson never could have raised enough money to overcome Steve Barnett’s name recognition in a statewide primary, but that isn’t what this is really about.
David Natvig never could have raised enough money to get Laura Kaiser’s story out to less-engaged Republicans in a statewide primary. Giving Marty Jackley even more incumbent protection for 2026 is what this is really about.
It’s a terrible idea that would be a defeat for Ronald Reagan’s legacy of idea-driven politics and a victory for the unprincipled wealthy and well-connected.
It’s not about Monae. It’s about convention delegates who do NOT represent the will of the people in their precincts. In the primary, Noem, Thune and Johnson all won their primaries by wide margins. But at the convention, nearly half the delegates declared they would not support their re-elections. The percentages didn’t match.
Convention delegates are more engaged and better informed than Republicans at large. They generally nominate candidates who are both more principled and, when they’re able to get their messages out, more electable.
What if the convention’s votes to run Steve Haugaard for lieutenant governor were caused by actual Noem mistakes? This establishment push to throw out the rules and disenfranchise those delegates displays exactly the kind of dismissive arrogance they were protesting.
Did we go to the same convention? I sat by someone from Minnehaha whom I’m sure eats crayons when she wasn’t screaming about RINOs
A lot of primary voters eat crayons and wouldn’t even know what “RINO” stands for.
anon 10:43 you opened the can of worms by challenging the self perception of better-informed-ness that allows them to define others as RINOs. i hope you’re happy now.
Anonymous at 10:40, your comment reveal that YOU are the one who is not informed.
The JOB of the precinct committee men and women is to conduct the political campaign in their precinct, to get the FULL slate of Republican candidates elected. If they signed up for that job, and then announced publicly that they were NOT going to support the Governor, that should have been considered their resignations.
Getting the vote out in your precinct for the gubernatorial candidate is the most important job you do for your county party, because that determines the weight of your county’s votes at the next two conventions. Failure to whip votes for the gubernatorial candidate is a disservice to your county party.
Precinct committee people who make it clear they don’t support the gubernatorial candidate have no business going to a convention, and should be replaced by people who will do their job.
Sounds like a county-level issue to me.
I was at the convention, if anything they seemed more reactive and ignorant than the average voter by an astounding margin.
YES!!!
Is this a reply to Anonymous at 10:40?
Have a primary but don’t let the dems still have a convention.
When the Democrats can no longer field candidates, they’ll probably go to court like the Libertarians did. It will probably cost the state another half a million dollars like the Libertarian suit did, and it will probably generate a lot more embarrassing media coverage than the Libertarian suit did.
I am listening to the webcast from the senate floor now. Of course Pischke is opposed to it, he was one of the convention delegates who stood up to be counted as not supporting the top of the ticket.
I hope all the Real Republicans pay attention to that: Tom Pischke publicly declared he was not going to vote for Noem, Thune or Johnson.
Never thought id see the day when the senate gop would take the dems amendment so they can still have a convention but ignore the wishes of the SD GOP chair.
the new SDGOP chairman is going to have to work with a lot of newly elected county officers who who get their information from Alex Jones and think everybody else is too ignorant to make policy
Hopefully the bill goes to the house to die. This is no way to unite a party. We all understand why this bill was presented, but let’s be honest here. We are a divided party right now, we are a party that basically runs the state, so, do we really want to be a party telling people “thanks, but you are no longer welcome in the room?” Thus having the result of people leaving the party or choosing not to be involved? I think the better answer would be to say “hey, we hear your concerns, let’s have a conversation and maybe come to agreement on something”. I believe John gave a perfect speech about this issue on the senate floor today!
The bill was brought years ago when it became apparent that the views expressed by convention delegates did not accurately reflect the views of the broader base. (Wasn’t it Tim Johnson who said the Taliban wing had taken over the Republican Party? ) It was tabled because the then-chairman thought things could be brought under control. The party by-laws committee started to discuss it, but were side-tracked by necessary national delegate selection changes in 2016 and 2020.
But by 2020 the state convention delegates were so far off to the right they came out in favor of the institution of slavery, voting DOWN a resolution about June 19th. That should have alerted everybody to how bad things were getting.
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But in 2022, Steve Haugaard’s supporters, who made up only 23.6% of the state’s Republican primary voters, showed up in disproportionate numbers at the state convention. Many of them are also anti-vaxxers, counted among the 17.2% of the population which hasn’t been vaccinated for covid. They don’t represent the majority of Republicans in the state at all, but they nearly dominated the convention.
The statistics don’t lie: the convention delegates are the fringiest of the fringe, representing less than a quarter of the Republicans in the state. If control of the nominating process isn’t turned over to the primary voters, we are going to be handed a slate of unacceptable candidates to vote for.
the “true conservatives” are the people who want to take us back to the good old days of 17th century slavery and smallpox.
you have nailed it, regarding illusions of big mandates created by radical interests who’ve gamed out how to surf on waves of voter indifference and pretend the wave is a mountain of support. conventions are supposed to be a pep rally for the ticket, and a forum to organize voter turnout efforts, not a place to rig a revote of the last primary and change the loss your candidates are perennially handed by voters.
This was a good idea until Schoenbeck made a deal with the Dems on an unfriendly amendment. Now the Republicans will work their butts off in a primary and spend a bunch of money and resources.
Meanwhile the Dems can still just go to convention and nominate people at the last minute like they always have. The amendment is complete crap, the house should remove the amendment. Either we have primaries or we don’t. I like primaries it’s a good idea, get rid of the convention option. That only benefits Dems in this case while in the long run hurting republicans. GOP dukes it out, Dems sit back and raise money and use the convex process like they always have.
Exactly my thoughts. Make it easy for dems. Make Wiik look ineffective. Of course he could get Noem to oppose it.
Once dissenting Republicans (or crazy Republicans to some) were 3-5% in primaries. Then they became 18%. Now they are 40%, based on the Dusty-Taffy primary.
If the establishment keeps away forums/opportunites of dissenters to express themselves, the dissenters will become the establishment.
In America, the people respond to oppression and suppression.
I tried talking to a few today and I will let you decide if they are dissenting or crazy:
One told me the precinct committee men and women had absolutely no say at all about the platform and resolutions. According to him, they were not provided any opportunities to provide input or to vote on them. Really.
Another told me that the party chairman had not done his job.(raising money and getting Republicans elected isn’t the chairman’s job?) Nobody is doing what “the people” want, the members of the legislature “are all liars, they aren’t doing what they said they would, they should remember they work for us,” and the entire situation is Dan Lederman’s fault, because…?
Another precinct committee woman stated that the entire job of the precinct committee people ENDS after the primaries. The day they’re elected, their job is done?
Dissenting, crazy, or ignorant of the purpose of a political party and the job descriptions of the party officers? If we don’t identify the problem we aren’t going to solve it.
Great news! hope it passes the house.
SB 40 is as DOA in the House as 1133 was in the Senate!!
I can’t believe some of these comments are coming from Republicans. The power comes from the people!! This is truly some fascist thinking here!
So many comments about party division and somehow giving 20 percent of the party control will save the party? Republican voters don’t know what they are doing?
It is time for this bill then because you are seeing exactly why we need it.
I don’t think anyone needs to be worried about the Democrats finding a stealth candidate (late to the game) at the convention to beat a Republican in South Dakota.