#6 – SDGOP wins again/Dems fail again… and again…
There are some sayings in South Dakota politics that have arisen over the past several decades that have solidified more and more into unshakeable fact. And one of those is that South Dakota is a Republican state.
Back when I first became involved in the late 80’s, Democrats had been able to take federal seats, and for a brief moment push Republicans out in at least one legislative chamber. But for the last 20 years, running as a democrat & winning office has become less and less likely. Much of that has been due to changes in how the parties do business, and the competency of the political groups’ statewide organizations. And this year has been no different.
Republicans – this past election under chair Dan Lederman – focused in a laser-like manner in getting their candidates elected, and staving off challenges to the party’s dominance on all fronts. While Democrats focused on filling seats with warm bodies, eventually garnering more candidates that the GOP, Republicans focused on quality candidate recruitment. In the end, the GOP held their historically high number of elected officials.
When disaffected Republicans started a pity party over their inability to gather enough signatures to achieve the ballot, and joined the constitutional party to try to run, the GOP took issue with their inattention to state law, and prevented them from becoming challengers who could spoil races by bleeding off votes.
The GOP worked extremely hard for the ticket and managed to make it happen for its officeholders in yet another election at the same time Democrats failed yet again.
With Chairwoman Ann Tornberg at the helm for the tail end of a four-year term, Democrats managed to suffer devastating losses on all fronts yet again.
When the National Democrats provided $50,000 to Democrats for voter registration, they managed to LOSE voters.
The GOP also pointed out with great glee how Democrats couldn’t get their act together on their nominating convention and had to hold a do-over state convention because Dems failed to certify their election results on a timely basis.
When National Democrats provided the party tens of thousands for operational costs and staff, locally they seemed to squander the money and opportunities, and failed to conduct valuable voter ID and get out the vote efforts in favor of texting people.
With few exceptions, Democrat candidates for statewide office were abandoned by the Democrat party, and did little to nothing to get elected.
With Ann Tornberg already campaigning for another 4-year term at the help of the State Democrat Party, and Republicans remaining firmly in the driver’s seat in state politics, this is a story that isn’t likely going to require revision anytime soon.
I think one of the less heralded stories is keeping the Constitution party off the general election ballot….most of their votes would have come from GOP voters and Kristi only won by 10,000…I think we owe Dan Lederman more than we know for that strategic move.
The only real voice speaking for the libbies is Mr. H’s blog, and the only people there are libbie out-of-staters who engage in juvenile name calling. That rubs off on Mr. H’s attempts to get into the legislatures and then onto all the other libbies in South Dakota too. The GOP owes them all a measure of thanks.
Grudzie true that but Mr. H shoots himself in the foot all the time making him unelectable but it is mostly an out of state commenter blog. Those libbie out-of-staters are insaner than most and scare voters away from the in-state Democrats.