Democrat Candidate for Governor Billie Sutton released a pile of his e-mails to the Rapid City Journal, and in there were a few interesting items of a political nature:
Crossing the aisle
State Sen. Stace Nelson, a Republican from Fulton, sent an email to the Democratic Senate leaders — Minority Leader Sutton, Assistant Minority Leader Troy Heinert and Minority Whip Jason Frerichs — seeking their help to force the funding for a proposed animal disease research and diagnostic laboratory at South Dakota State University to come from a governor-controlled pot of economic development money called the Future Fund.
“Take a look at this and please help me in getting this drafted properly,” Nelson wrote. “I want every dime to come out of the governor’s slush funds.”
Further correspondence ensued among Sutton, Frerichs and Nelson. But the bill ended up passing into law with funding from an increase in the general education tax levy on agricultural property. Nelson voted against the final version of the bill, while Sutton, Heinert and Frerichs voted for it.
and…
Political strategy
Sutton forwarded three pages of notes from a planning meeting of the Gregory County Democrats, where attendees apparently discussed the lessons Democrats could learn from the 2016 general election in which Donald Trump was elected president.
Entries under the heading “What is the takeway from this election?” included “Need to care about middle class and too much of a focus on minorities.” Another entry under that heading was, “People are tired of being called racists whether they are or not. People think Obama made racism worse. Tired of Political Correctness. Tied Obama to Hillary and establishment and a continuation of his policies.”
One of the entries under the heading “What are the goals of the county party?” was “Beat Lee Qualm.” That was a reference to Rep. Lee Qualm, R-Platte, who is currently the House majority leader.
Read it here at the Rapid City Journal.
So, what secrets did we learn?
Stace Nelson sought out Democrat help to draft his legislation to direct how SDSU’s new animal resource lab was to be funded. And when he didn’t get his way, he voted against the animal disease research and diagnostic laboratory.
And the goal of Gregory County Democrats are to “Beat Lee Qualm.”
Anything we didn’t expect? Your thoughts?
Stace votes with the Democrats more often than he votes with most Republicans. He claims that is because the Republicans are “RINOs.” So does that mean the Democrats are the real Republicans? Will Stace be endorsing Billie? Does Billie even want his support?
Or could it be Stace is just a contrarian with a persecution complex who is desperate for attention?
Mr. Nelson is more democrat than most. If it took Mr. Sutton 4 months to release 2 weeks of his emails how long will it take to release and edit out private information from 10,000 government employees emailing about sensitive information like welfare complaints? When Mr. Sutton is not Governor he could get a job editing all the state emails.
The South Dakota Nelsonian Party endorses Billie Sutton for Governor?
Third Place Stace!!
How much was the lab?