Exciting news – the latest edition of the South Dakota Political Show with myself and Mike Lauritsen is now live (and live a day early).
This episode is bursting at the seams, with introductions from co-host Mike Lauritsen, as well as an extensive discussion with South Dakota Republican Party Chairman and State Senator John Wiik, as he winds down the final weeks of his time as chairman of the state’s largest political party in a reflection and review of his time in office.
Chairman Wiik points out some of the challenges he faced over the past 2 years, and what might be coming for the South Dakota Republican Party in the coming months.
You can listen to the podcast as hosted on Acast, or on Apple Podcasts… All you have to do is click and listen!
It’s a really sad situation that efforts to get the precinct committee people to do the job they signed up for have led to this.
In Minnehaha County, Maggie Sutton held meetings to inform them of what was expected of them. She told them they were responsible for all voter contact. As soon as they could, they voted her out of the chairmanship. How dare the chairwoman tell them they were expected to do any WORK?
In Yankton County all the people who were getting the job done were ousted by people who had no idea what they were supposed to do, other than sue the former officeholders.
In Brookings County, a group of Precinct committee people voted out the state committeewoman who had done a good job of organizing the monthly Monday noon luncheons, and I don’t think they’ve had a luncheon since. Moody County used to coordinate with that, and would have the same speaker stop in Flandreau for coffee & conversation before going to Brookings for lunch, so that was disappointing.
In Moody County, I distributed 50 Noem-Rhoden yard signs, 10 each to our precincts, and then spent the time leading up to the general election driving around the county wondering what happened to them. Most of our Precinct Committee people were not Noem-Rhoden supporters. I think we had only one precinct person who understood the assignment .
Going to a state convention and seeing nearly half the delegates stand up to be counted as being opposed to the election of the candidates who won the primary, or going to a central committee meeting and realizing that the person you have just met wants nothing more than to talk smack about the Governor and thinks you will sympathize, makes you want to stay home.
At Dusty Johnson’s victory party on Election Night, I found myself listening to somebody talk about how she doesn’t think Dusty is conservative enough and she doesn’t like John Thune at all. What was she even doing there???? What are any of these people doing? They don’t support the Republican candidates or officeholders and they aren’t any fun to be around. Why can’t they just stay home?
It’s not surprising the donors are pulling back. They might as well be giving money to the SDDP
You forgot Brown County!!!!!!!
It’s happening all over. The county parties are being taken over by people who don’t like Republicans. None of the incumbents are good enough for them. The incumbents never represent “the will of the people.”
Ask the obvious question “if they aren’t representing the will of the people, how did they win re-election?” and you will get an earful of conspiracy theories about how the elections are rigged.
One delegate complained that voting in the primary “didn’t work.”
So now we have people who want to be the state party chair who want to get involved in primary races. The primary results have not reflected “the will of the people,” because the primary voters keep voting for the wrong candidates. The only solution, therefore, is for the state party to rig the primaries.
This is going to be really interesting at the next state central committee meeting. Each candidate for state party chairman can be asked “what is your plan to rig the primaries so the voters don’t nominate the wrong candidates?”
The new folks have all been transformed by grooming into Tasmanian Devils.
Young Mr. Wiik is an honorable man. grudznick owes him a gravy laden breakfast for his service.