Toby Doeden’s toxic PAC gets involved in local Brookings races. The problem is, the candidates didn’t ask for it or want it.

Imagine running for office doing your own thing, talking to community members, putting up signs, etc.  And then a bombshell is dropped in your lap when on an unsolicited basis, Satan endorses you.  Maybe not coming from the dark lord himself, but a text message blast fired out a short while ago this AM which may have roiled two local races seems pretty close.

Both Al Austreim running for Brookings City Council and Kelsey Bowman running for Brookings School Board are registered Republicans, and had been putting forth a respectable effort in running with signs, mailers and the such going out in what had been a sleepy contest.

And then this text message hit this morning:

Toby Doeden’s, Dakota First Action had fired off a text message in support of local Brookings candidates Kelsey Bowman and Al Austreim in the April 8 election, It was surprising, considering the PAC had shown no interest to date in the race.  The problem with Doeden getting involved in this race for these two candidates is that Doeden and his PAC are not just a little radioactive:

The message came from North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. CNN recently reported that Robinson made racist and sexually explicit remarks more than a decade ago on a pornographic website’s message board. The report said Robinson, who has a recent history of anti-transgender rhetoric, said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, referred to himself as a “black Nazi,” expressed support for reinstating slavery and praised Adolf Hitler.

Robinson’s video speech occurred during the Dakota First Action political action committee’s Victory Gala. Toby Doeden, an Aberdeen businessman and founder of Dakota First Action, said his fellow Republicans who are condemning Robinson are hurting the party.

“CNN has no substantive proof,” Doeden said. “Republicans will eat their own. If he were on the left, not a single Democrat would have called for him to step down.”

and..

Current state Republican leaders “aren’t conservatives,” Doeden alleged. 

“They’re liberals that register as Republicans because they can’t get elected as Democrats,” he said. “These people are hacks. They’re clowns. They’re disgusting. I started my PAC to eradicate hacks like that from serving in the Legislature – period.” 

Read that here.

The man whose last PAC event was protested by the NAACP has apparently decided he is going to endorse candidates in the Brookings City & School races. The problem is they didn’t ask the candidates, as one of them confirmed to me that they “had nothing to do with” the text message.

Al Austreim, candidate for Brookings City Council reached out to me this morning to let me know that “neither Kelsey nor I had anything to do with this,” as they were shocked and in speaking with Al, had a bit of dismay why this Political Action Committee decided to show up and get involved.  “We did not approve this” and we have “no control over it” was the message directly offered in response to the text blast reaching far across the community, where he expressed concern over this Aberdeen based PAC inserting itself into the race.

It’s not unheard of, as it would not be the first time Toby “Dumpster-fire” Doeden attempted to endorse candidates without their say so. If I could draw your attention to February 2024 :

Read that here.

At the time, Doeden had endorsed Fred Deutsch in the District 4 Senate Race.  You probably can’t find this post, because immediately after it went up, it came down. Because I have it on good authority that Fred didn’t ask for it, nor want it.  And that was before Doeden further descended into infamy. And here we are a little more than a year later with satan Doeden’s group back at it.

The problem is that in Brookings, a fairly middle-of-the-road South Dakota University community, it could threaten to derail these candidate’s home-spun campaigns.  When you have PAC messaging from Doeden’s toxic organization which is the opposite of the South Dakota nice these candidates are trying to communicate with in their races, it’s not a good thing.

In speaking with Austreim, he seems authentic and earnest in his desire to run for the local city council, and expresses that he’s running a transparent campaign, and wants to engage with the community. Unfortunately, when it comes to outside forces inserting themselves into the contest, they “have no control over it.”

If anything, it sounds like they want to get Doeden and his PAC out of town, and out of the race.

Al and Kelsey seemed to have a fair amount of wind in their sails for the final 2 weeks of running their campaigns. Now, through the actions of Toby Doeden and his toxic PAC dropping their text message bomb, they might be fighting for their political lives against the help they didn’t ask for and didn’t want.