After being amended to encompass all statewide offices, with the exception of Lt. Governor, who will be picked by the Governor, Senate Bill 40 passed Senate State Affairs committee this morning to revise the process for nominating candidates for statewide office, moving lower offices from being selected at state party conventions into being selected as part of the primary ballot. Those running below the level of Governor would have to collect half the number of signatures of the gubernatorial candidate to be placed on the ballot
Testifying that the bill would bring true grassroot representation to nominating statewide elected officials, State Senator David Johnson, presented the bill as an expansion of the number of people who would participate in the process. Proponents provided examples of how many people selected the candidate for governor, versus the number who selected candidates in the convention process, comparing tens of thousands to fewer than 100 in some counties.
Opponents to the measure testifying online were Rick Weible and Matthew Monfore, who had to be reigned in a bit on keeping it on topic.
The measure passed on a vote of 6-3 in committee, with Wheeler and Tobin opposing, as well as Democrat Reynold Nesiba, who was seeking an alternate nomination process for Democrats who failed to fill offices (which tells you how bad off Democrats are).
*update*
I did have a legislator ask me where they can find the votes from this last convention, which I do have posted here. (as originally found here)
Where were Wiik and Fitzgerald?
Wiik and Fitzgerald are not on the committee so why are you asking where they were?
Do you think either of them would be opposed to this?
Wiik was so annoyed by Monae Johnson’s convention delegates, how they behaved during the resolutions committee report, that he left abruptly and didn’t stay around for the platform committee report. And he had been the chair of that committee.
Fitzgerald witnessed the mess created by Lance Russell’s delegates which ultimately torpedoed her husband’s candidacy. Fitz had the momentum until Russell’s people showed up and behaved so badly the nomination went to Ravnsborg. Those crazies hit the venue with a blizzard of negativity against Ravnsborg and it backfired.
I can’t imagine either of them being opposed to SB 40 so we will see how they vote when they have to.
Wow. Wiik repeatedly told central committee members he and the governor are in lock step against any changes to the nominating process. (Other than LG)
Might be time for him to show up and publicly express their disdain for the bill.
We knew in the party central committee that if we didn’t change the party bylaws, the legislature would change the process for us.
The nominating process has been under discussion for years: either we would fix it or the legislature would. That was the situation: fix it or lose it.
The Central Committee met in January and voted against changing the bylaws. Anybody who didn’t understand that the vote against changing the bylaws was a vote to pass the problem over to the legislature was taking a nap.
And there you have it.
Anonymous at 10:40 I think you need more clarification: a lot of us wanted to address the problems of the nominating process through changes to the party bylaws. We weren’t fans of SB 40.
But the party Central Committee met in January and rejected the bylaws solution. So as party leaders, that puts Wiik and Fitzgerald in an uncomfortable position, because the party was opposed to the bylaws solution, and essentially voted for the legislative solution.
It will be interesting to see how the votes go.
If SB 40 fails, the Central Committee will have to revisit the bylaws issue. God help us.
Great idea!
Not sure why Sen. Wheeler was opposed. The expense of primaries perhaps? In any event, I hope this becomes law. State conventions won’t be nearly as much fun, though.
I am interested in your definition of “fun.”
Wheeler was the chairman of the SDGOP bylaws committee which drafted the proposal which was shot down by the SDGOP Central Committee in January. Since the choice at that meeting was to change the nominating process through a bylaw change, or allow the legislature to fix it instead, I imagine he would prefer to let the SDGOP Central Committee revisit the proposed changes to the bylaws.
Basically the central committee voted to let the legislature proceed with SB 40. Weibel’s belief that they should all have received a letter from the state party exec board expressing opposition to SB 40 is curious given the results of the January meeting. I think somebody brought up the idea of it but it was agreed to let the exec board take that under consideration, and that was it.
Yes, this needs to happen. Give all the party voters a say, not just those recruited to the convention.
I hope it goes through. Too many fanatics causing a ruckus at the convention.
Monfore and Weible are out there….
Reigning Monfore in has become on a common occurrence
That’s what the Pine Ridge reservation said as well…
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/15/1117605626/a-reservation-in-south-dakota-bans-outside-missionaries
The SD GOP leadership not showing up and letting those clowns lead the opposition is incredible.
My assessment is that the SDGOP leadership is not opposed to the measure. They’re all fed up with the armies of loony precinct committee people who show up at their conventions. It’s costing way too much money to accommodate them.
Not much of a party if this changes.
If it passes, the GOP will adapt and survive quite well. Somehow North Dakota manages to have a pretty robust party endorsement convention.
We had talked about changing the convention nominating process for years. At the SDGOP summer meeting in August 2022, the bylaws committee still didn’t have a proposal for us. I stood up and put it bluntly that “if we don’t fix this (the nominating process) the legislature is going to take it away from us.”
Lederman said he had spoken to some in the legislature and they had agreed to give the party more time to come up with a solution, but after the last convention, time was running out.
The central committee members present at that meeting voted to charge the bylaws committee to come up with a proposal for us to vote on at the January meeting. We gave them a deadline and if it didn’t happen, the legislature would take the ball and run with it.
Everybody at the January meeting knew or should have known we were down to the wire on this: fix it or lose it. The central committee voted to leave the bylaws as is.
Get it?
Now go and ask the Central Committee members why they voted the way they did.