This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
Several top political posts in South Dakota are up for grabs next year. That includes the governor's seat and the state's lone U.S. representative in Congress.
Our Dakota Political Junkies analyze the early days of the race.
Jon Hunter is publisher emeritus of the Madison Daily Leader and a member of the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame.
Michael Card, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of South Dakota.
____________________________________________________________
The following transcript was auto-generated and edited for clarity.
Lori Walsh:
We are going to take a snapshot of where we're at today in the race for governor and U.S. House, maybe a little bit about the U.S. Senate race. Lots of things that we don't know, but a few things that we do.
And we now know that Marty Jackley is not going to be running for governor. He's running for U.S. House and has quite a list of donors getting ready to raise some money for him.
Tell me a little bit, and maybe we'll start with you, Mike Card, about where we're at when somebody announces, we've seen different kinds of announcements. We've seen everybody gather at the Alliance and do a big show of an announcement. We've seen a lower key announcement, but at some point you got to raise the money and that's where Mr. Jackley is at now.
Michael Card:
Well, it's very much like any sort of fundraising effort. The big point is this is the quiet stage and the quiet stage has apparently ended already, and so you have to raise money to purchase advertising to make sure that your name and your message gets out there and is available to the voters and to those who will support you while you are running.
So what we've seen is Marty Jackley has had a fundraiser with significant success so far, and a list of names is significant just in terms of its volume and they've each paid a thousand dollars for a dinner. So you can raise money quickly that way.
You can also — our members of Congress, they don't like us to talk about it, but as a former political science professor, we do have to talk about it. There are office buildings off federal government property that the parties lease, and often our representatives and senators are in those rooms making phone calls asking for money.
And Citizens United, the Supreme Court case from 2010, has basically said money is speech, so therefore, it is very difficult to regulate.
You raise as much money as you can and you hope to raise it now sooner so that no competitors come in or no highly legitimate competitors come in or you spend your own money if you're a multimillionaire in various places around the country, including South Dakota.
So you're chasing others off saying, do you want to fight me in the bank? Do you want to fight me in my bank account? Do you want to fight me in my political action committee?
It chases people away and that's not exactly democratic.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Jon, how often or how common is it for a list of, hey, here's a list of people who are hosting tables for a Marty Jackley fundraiser, comes out. You can read all the names of your physician, whoever is on that list. Is that pretty standard that we always know that sort of thing? Or is it unusual to see a list like that?
Jon Hunter:
It is slightly unusual. More common is going to be these are the list of people who are endorsing me, are supporting me, not necessarily these people all paid a thousand dollars or more for the right to do that.
So as Mike was saying, that the announcement is one thing, and there's an early element to that that he was talking about that said, I'm on the way. It's going to be hard to catch up to me.
But political fundraising in some sense, it has two purposes. One, this thing where they're announcing, look, all these people are supporting me. In other words, I've already got lots of support. But then the fundraising itself, the money says, look, we're going to be able to attract more voters in the future too because we're going to be able to get our message out. So the fundraising portion really has two positive elements. That's why they want to get out in the public and say how well they're doing for the fundraising.
Michael Card:
It makes it difficult, even if you have a statewide presence, such as being the majority leader in the Senate from two years ago or a year ago that Casey Crabtree who's also running for the house seat, it's probably an attempt to scare him off.
Jon Hunter:
In some ways, the announcement is almost an afterthought in most of these things. They'll file their papers, they'll do all this, they'll set up a committee.
Governor Rhoden just this week said, "Sandy and I are not ready to make an announcement."
Well, the whole thing is in place. You go to "Governor Rhoden for governor" and there is a website and so forth. So in some states they like to space those out a little bit just so they can try to keep getting in the people's view.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, it's going to be hard to keep things under wraps for too long if you're going around and asking for money. To your point of the quiet stage, how many times did we hear Dusty Johnson's running for governor a year ago where people say, and I was like, I haven't seen him say that he's running for governor. Everybody's like, yeah, he's running for governor because he was going around seeking endorsements and then getting there first.
Jon Hunter:
Which is interesting, too, because think of that congressional terms are only two years and so barely after he was elected, we don't think of him constantly being elected because he tends to win. He's won by bigger margins.
But moments after he is elected, he announces that he's leaving the job and in 18 months or two-year term, and so 18 months from now, he has to serve. He has a current job to serve until 2027.
Lori Walsh:
Marty Jackley has the same issue he is, and so does Larry Rhoden. I mean, these are all people who are in positions that have been elected to be there. So how do you behave then, Mike, because you mentioned people in Congress in D.C., scampering across the street to the extra building to dial for dollars and then coming back to vote.
How do you separate the candidate from, what are the ethics here that people are watching for?
Michael Card:
At a minimum, we know that whoever gives money gets access to the person. They will take your call. Whereas if I were to call one of our senators or our representative, it might take a while for them to get back to me, and that's to be expected because, appearing on your show, I don't give money to candidates, but that's one of the challenges.
We've also seen the challenge. The party doesn't really raise much money. And so it's really become, starting with Nixon, a very strongly candidate centered race. Now, certainly it was the community re-elected president that had all kinds of other problems in addition to raising money, in terms of trying to denigrate opponents and people who might speak ill of them.
But now what we see is you're just raising money and it's very difficult to stop that process or even control that process because money is speech. Unless you can show, supposedly, according to Citizens United, that your state has a history of corruption from which money was the cause of the corruption.
Lori Walsh:
So money talks, but money isn't supposed to be able to buy influence.
But you're saying it does. They'll take your call.
Michael Card:
Yeah, it at least buys a listen, which may then lead to influence.
Jon Hunter:
Here's why we have the power of the incumbency is because they have that microphone almost all the time. So if Larry Rhoden goes on an open for opportunity tour, which is a terrific tour, and it's focusing on small, medium and large towns and he's getting ink in every community.
And an opponent doesn't get that, doesn't have that. You can't say, here's the Doeden open-for-opportunity tour. Maybe some people will listen and the words you use during those speeches can be very much for south and can also be very much for reelection. That's just the way that is.
But that's the reason incumbents do so well is one of the reasons they do so. Well, yes, they can raise money, but also that they have that microphone or they have that audience.
Lori Walsh:
So what are some of the issues that you're seeing show up already? Let's talk about Toby Doeden. He is already spending a lot of that money. It's in your mailbox.
Michael Card:
Yeah, he's going on tour around the state as we have noted incumbents are doing and having listening sessions and providing what his platform is. And as he talks, he gets the chance to alter it. Just as anyone trying to pass any legislation would do is you need to talk to who your opponents might be and even your supporters and say, we wish your message would be a little bit different.
And they can adjust or not based on what the populace thinks. That's the positive spin to this. A more negative spin to this is you're spending money to get your name known that somebody without money wouldn't have a chance to do. But we are a country that tends to look positively towards people who are monetarily successful.
Jon Hunter:
Remember too, that this election for governor will be decided by Republican voters. So that'll be in the primary, whoever wins that will likely win, but there's only one independent, one Democratic candidate and they're not well-known.
So in a lot of senses, if I look at the platforms of each of the candidates that we either have declared or we think they're trying to out-republican each other.
Lori Walsh:
In this day and age, that means out-Trump each other.
Jon Hunter:
Yes, there is a lot of that. I think the message is, to me, it's not very differentiating right now because they're always saying, cut property taxes, reduce wasteful spending, kind of the same lines.
Lori Walsh:
Fraud, corruption.
Jon Hunter:
Right. The same lines. So what I yearn for is creative thinking and some new ideas and so forth. But at the moment, I think it would be hard for a voter who just laid out a spreadsheet of all these issues to determine which person they're going to vote for.
So what happens then, it goes to other factors, whether they're tall or short or good-looking or young or old or whatever the other factors are that people use to decide races. But the platforms themselves look really similar.
Lori Walsh:
Mr. Doeden said when he was here that he was going to get brand new revenue in tons of millions of revenue. And I said, "A year from now, two years from now?" He's like, "First week." And I was like, "Where's that coming from?" And he said taxing trust industry in banking.
So that was an idea I hadn't heard before and probably not a very popular one with the banking industry in South Dakota.
Michael Card:
Or the trust industry.
Lori Walsh:
For the trust industry in South Dakota. And maybe make sense to some mom-and-pop voters who wonder why we're not getting more money from that industry in the way that he's describing it, because certainly the industry is benefiting South Dakota. So there will be some nuances to that in the campaign trail that you would see differently on the spreadsheet if you were putting them side by side.
Jon Hunter:
I didn't know what that was where you say you would get, I think he said raise revenue through external sources. So I didn't know exactly what that is, but that sounds like a tax that you're describing. And I guess if you're clear about that, I think the way to solve South Dakota's problems is the increased taxes. Then go ahead and say that.
Lori Walsh:
Right. Yeah.
Jon Hunter:
I am all for transparency, as you can imagine. So say what you mean, mean what you say.
Lori Walsh:
What differences do you hear out of the gate for some of these candidates who are running, as Jon says, trying to out-Republican each other, but what does that mean right now? What does it mean to be a Republican right now in South Dakota in the public rhetoric that we're hearing?
Michael Card:
Well, I think we've discussed that briefly, and that is how closely aligned are you with President Trump and the agenda that he is putting forward, which looks very much like the 2025 agenda, except it's been somewhat localized to South Dakota. It's the argument against foreign adversaries, and whether that be China, it apparently is not Russia, but that's a different story that is probably relevant for at least for a little while.
But we're confusing campaign promises for outputs, which is some type of activity as opposed to some type of outcome. And it was very interesting to listen to Tuesday's In The Moment show for me because you had educators, and one of the challenges that they brought up in terms of the educational system that we have is we seem to be measuring outputs. Can you solve this type of mathematical problem? Do you memorize the list of presidents as opposed to the ultimate purpose of education is to produce good citizens? It should be.
That's why the state does it, and that's why our forefathers put that article in our constitution that there is a purpose to education in South Dakota to make good citizens. So what does that mean? And it doesn't necessarily follow through that what we're talking about are simply outputs, which are measures of activity as opposed to outcomes.
Lori Walsh:
Output versus outcome.
Michael Card:
Right.
Lori Walsh:
Oh, that's fascinating.
Michael Card:
And I think that's most of what we're dealing with here, and that may be because the more specific we can be, the more likely our citizenry, including myself or to pay attention to this, but instead, we need to think bigger and what is the vision for the future? What does it look like if we do all of these things?
I think that's one of the challenges we face with our members of Congress. That's one of the challenges we face in our statewide elected officials is how can we get them to talk about what their vision for the future is that's not so much like the quote in Dakota Spiritual Geography? Our ideal future is to go back to the 1950s.
Lori Walsh:
Right. The vision for the future. Are you seeing that Jon, or are people laying out a vision for the future?
Jon Hunter:
As I think about that and what Mike and you, Lori are saying, it seems to me it's hard to do that in abbreviated form. If you really had that kind of vision, it would be almost a manifesto where you'd have some long well-thought, here's chapter one education. Here's chapter two roads, or whatever the topics are. It's hard to do that in the postcard or in a banner ad on a website or any of those. I think it would be neat.
Lori Walsh:
Is that project 2025? A manifesto that's incredibly detailed, here's what we're going to do to public broadcasting. Here's what we're going to do.
Jon Hunter:
Well, yes, except it's not the individual, that's a group thing.
Lori Walsh:
Okay.
Jon Hunter:
So if I were running for this, it would be my ideas. It's what this, and then you tell the voters, look, if you agree with me, you should vote with me. If you don't agree with you, that's cool. There are other people and you can vote for them. The interesting thing is the legislature and the governor play a different role.
Mike has often talked about the representative nature of the legislature where you're actually representing the people in your district, whereas the governor doesn't. Yes, you're representing the whole state, but basically you're forming those ideas to yourself, and we should let the voters decide if that's what you want or not.
But I'd really love to see some on an individual basis that said, look, this is what I believe, and have the faith, the confidence in yourself to say, if that's not what you want, that's cool. There's other candidates.
And in other words, you shouldn't kowtow to whatever voters want in this case. You should do what you believe in because ultimately, when you cast a vote, it should be what you believe in, not to what others believe.
