Political Smokeout

Dems talk past, future at state party dinner

Democrats had a split focus at their state party dinner Saturday night — celebrating the past service of retiring Sen. Tim Johnson and the recently deceased George McGovern, and hope for the upcoming 2014 elections.

The annual McGovern Day Dinner in Sioux Falls included a video tribute to McGovern, the former senator and presidential candidate and namesake of the dinner who died last October. Party chair Ben Nesselhuf termed him the “founder of our party” for his work rebuilding an almost non-existent Democratic Party in the 1950s, while Sioux Falls Mayor Mike Huether discussed lessons he had learned from McGovern.

There was also a valedictory speech from Johnson, who announced his retirement from the Senate last month. Johnson shied away from politics but thanked his friends and supporters in the audience.

“Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for making us feel like the luckiest people in America,” Johnson said.

Other speakers focused on the politics. In an unscheduled speech, Democratic strategist Steve Jarding gave a fiery speech blasting Gov. Dennis Daugaard and other state Republican leaders for their policies with regard to education, economic development and the environment.

“Let’s take this thing back, let’s win the governor’s race next year, and let’s make South Dakota strong again,” said Jarding.

With the party looking to defend Johnson’s U.S. Senate seat, the dinner’s keynote speaker was a senator many South Dakota Democrats hope to emulate — Heidi Heitkamp, who won an upset victory in North Dakota last year.

Heitkamp told attendees that a combination of hard work and passion was the key to winning in a Republican state.

“No stone was left unturned, because we knew it was going to be that close,” she said.

So far Democrats have no announced candidates for Senate, governor or U.S. House in 2014, though several names are rumored and Heitkamp told the crowd “you know who they are.”

U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson, a rumored Senate candidate, was not present. Former Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin introduced Heitkamp, but didn’t discuss the 2014 race in her remarks.

Democrats launch ‘smart safety’ website against HB 1087

A new website, smartschoolsafety.org, seeks to galvanize public opinion against House Bill 1087, the so-called “school sentinels” bill to allow districts to arm volunteer defenders.

“Guns in school may be coming to your community if radical Republicans have their way. The South Dakota House passed a bill to put more guns in the hands of school teachers, janitors, or other school personnel,” the website declares.

Is this a grassroots backlash against House Republican overreach?

Nope.

The bottom of the website declares it’s paid for by “The Majority Project.”

If you visit South Dakota’s campaign finance website, you’ll find that’s a political action committee run by Ben Nesselhuf, who just happens to be the chairman of the South Dakota Democratic Party.

FTEs in Daugaard’s budget

Late tonight, the South Dakota Democratic Party opened a new line of assault on Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s budget:

What’s Gov. Daugaard hiding from his FY2014 budget address? We’re getting word that he’s adding 60 FTEs to state gov staff @argusmontgomery

— SD Democratic Party (@SoDakDems) December 5, 2012

I snarked a bit about the “getting word” phrasing — I had not yet noticed this particular detail, but staffing information is included in the full budget book released every year — and which had been released earlier today.

So I opened up the budget book summary and found my answer on page 45:

The source of the SDDP’s complaint is at the bottom: 60.7 extra FTEs in the executive branch. Above, that breaks down into 14.5 for Corrections, 21.4 for the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, eight for Health, nine for Public Safety, five for Information and Telecommunications, and a smattering for other departments.

The Democrats are right that these FTE increases are in the budget and that Daugaard did not mention them in his speech. I’ll reach out to the governor’s staff tomorrow for a fuller accounting, but here’s my hunches:

The 14.5 staff for Corrections and nine for Public Safety may have something to do with the new criminal justice initiative the governor is working on. (Or they may not, or may only in part.)

No clue what the Department of Health workers are for.

By far the most interesting bit of information are the 21.4 extra FTEs for GOED. A little bit more information can be found on page 34 of the budget summary book, which notes that all this extra FTE growth is for the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority, the authority that oversees the Sanford Underground Research Facility at Homestake.

The Homestake Mine got several mentions in Daugaard’s budget — $2 million to improve the Ross Shaft at the underground lab, and $1.9 million (buried inside the $5.3 million increase for the Board of Regents) to start a PhD program in physics at USD and the School of Mines, to tie in to the underground lab.

Neither of those appear to be the cause of the 21.4 extra Science and Technology Authority FTEs. From page 34:

“Increases of 21.4 FTE and $3,125,988 in other fund expenditure authority are to reflect anticipated expenses.” (Emphasis mine)

“Anticipated expenses” is as vague as it gets; other explanations of funding increases on the same page include “changes in bureau billings,” “due to no longer spending Health Insurance Exchange planning grant funds,” “increased health insurance costs” and “to align the budgets with anticipated expenditures.”

My guess is that the Homestake Mine is at the center of one of those initiatives Daugaard said he was going to discuss in detail in the State of the State address.

The mention of “other fund expenditure authority” means it won’t be South Dakota taxpayers who foot the bill for these 21.4 positions, if I’m reading it correctly. There is probably a grant from the feds or a university or a nonprofit from which South Dakota is going to benefit.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have fuller information about all these proposed new FTEs.

Nesselhuf blasts Rounds

No honeymoons in politics these days. Twenty-six minutes after Rounds’ campaign announcement comes this release from South Dakota Democratic Party chair Ben Nesselhuf:

Governor Mike Rounds is a nice guy with the wrong priorities for the U.S. Senate. Rounds clamored for hundreds of millions in stimulus dollars to mask his record of deficit spending, oversaw explosive growth in state government, and abused state resources for personal gain. What legacy did he leave for the state of South Dakota? A broken corporate giveaway program, a new Governor’s mansion, and a $127 million budget deficit in 2011. Senator Tim Johnson has delivered for the state of South Dakota. Governor Mike Rounds has not.

and…

Governor Mike Rounds is challenging Senator Tim Johnson for his Senate seat in 2014. Senator Tim Johnson has never lost an election in his political career starting in the South Dakota state house in 1979. He has defeated Republican titans, including Senators Larry Pressler and John Thune.

Johnson has yet to declare whether he’s seeking reelection.

Hunhoff, Frerichs reelected as Democratic leaders

South Dakota’s Democratic lawmakers reelected their top leaders Friday night.

Sen. Jason Frerichs, D-Wilmot, will continue as the Senate minority leader, and Rep. Bernie Hunhoff, D-Yankton, will be the House minority leader for another term.

Meeting near Madison, the Senate Democrats elected largely the same leaders as the past two years. The one new addition is Sen. Billie Sutton, D-Burke, who is the new assistant minority leader.

“I thought I’d be in a good position to work with people across the aisle,” Sutton said. “I want to foster good relationships with the Republicans and the Democrats together.”

Reelected to their leadership posts were Senate minority whip Jim Bradford of Pine Ridge, and caucus chair Angie Buhl of Sioux Falls.

The House Democrats had more changes, with only Hunhoff and Rep. Peggy Gibson of Huron returning to the Legislature from last year’s leadership team. Gibson, who had expressed interest in the assistant leader position, was reelected to another term as a minority whip, along with newcomer Rep. Scott Parsley, D-Madison.

“I feel like I have a good grasp of the role the whip needs to play, in terms of being able to understand the bills and work with our caucus on what the bills mean and what the ramifications are,” said Parsley, a first-time lawmaker.

The assistant House minority leader is Rep. Julie Bartling, D-Burke, a 10-year veteran of the House and Senate who returned to the Legislature this year after a hiatus.

The House Democratic caucus chair, Rep. Jim Peterson of Revillo, also has 10 years service in the Legislature and was reelected this year.

Frerichs said the Senate Democratic elections were low-key, unlike last year when then-Sen. Eldon Nygaard’s defeat in a leadership race contributed to his decision to switch to the Republican Party. 

Just 27 years old, Frerichs said he liked the split between young and old in the Senate Democratic team.

“It’s not just our young guns, it’s nice to have someone who’s been around the block, been through many, many debates,” Frerichs said, highlighting Bradford’s 14 years in the Legislature.

The House Democratic elections were more competitive.

“We had a bunch of ties,” said Hunhoff.

He called the House Democratic leadership team “as good as I’ve ever seen” with “experience” and “diversity.”

The Senate Republicans elected their leaders, including another term for Senate Majority Leader Russell Olson, R-Wentworth, on Monday.

House Republicans elect their leaders at 7 a.m. Saturday morning.

A legislative landslide, by the numbers

(Note: The original version of this post contained incorrect numbers that decreased the number of Democratic votes, due to a spreadsheet formatting error. The post has been updated to reflect the correct numbers.)

Across South Dakota, Republican state Senate candidates received a total of 233,530 votes. Democrats, and Democratic-leaning independents, got a total of 117,776 votes.

If this were a two-person race, the Republican would have received 66.6 percent of the vote, to 33.5 for the Democrat.

That’s almost as high as Chris Nelson got in his landslide victory over Nick Nemec.

But you might say that’s not fair, since there were 11 Senate seats with only Republican candidates, and only two Senate seats where Democrats ran unopposed. (You might also say that’s the Democrats’ fault for not running candidates, but let’s set that aside for now.)

If you look only at races with candidates in both parties, the Republicans lose 86,000 votes, and the Democrats lose the 12,000 votes Jason Frerichs and Jim Bradford racked up between them.

But even subtracting this, Republican senate candidates in contested races received 146,857 votes, to 94,368 for the Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.

That’s a 60.9 percent to 39.1 percent victory for our amalgamated Republicans, or a worse performance for the consolidated Democrats than Matt Varilek had statewide.

But there’s a lot of really conservative districts across the state, even discounting the ones so red the Democrats didn’t run anyone.

What if we look at just the very closest races in the state — the 10 races where the winner’s margin of error was the smallest.

In those races, Democratic candidates earned 45,697 votes, to 48,484 for the Republicans. That’s a 51.4 percent win for the Republicans, compared to 48.5 percent for the Democrats.

Of the 10 closest races, Democrats won four.

Here’s those close races:

So much for the dead cat

Before polls closed, I predicted the South Dakota Democrats would receive at least a “dead cat bounce” and pick up a few seats in the South Dakota Legislature.

Turns out, not so much.

Despite an aggressive and unprecedentedly centralized postcard campaign, the South Dakota Democratic Party looks set to have essentially no change in its net legislative delegation.

With current results at 2:30 a.m., the Democrats have picked up two seats in the state Senate, for a total of 7. That’s with the Rave-Ahlers race in District 25 still undecided, the Republican Rave ahead by 300 votes with five of 11 precincts fully reporting. Ahlers could conceivably win that and become the eighth Democratic senator.

That’s good news for the Democrats — a modest pickup in the Senate.

But that’s all undone by further losses in the South Dakota House.

The Democrats held 19 House seats the past two years, a less pathetic total than the five Senate seats they held.

But now, if all results hold — including a razor-thin margin for Democrat Paula Hawk in District 9 — the Democrats will lose two House seats, for a new total of 17.

That leaves them with still 24 total legislative seats. Twenty-five if Ahlers squeaks out a victory, possibly less if Hawk loses.

Given that even a pickup of 2-3 seats would have been viewed as disappointing, this has to be considered a serious missed opportunity by the Democrats.

Did this represent voters rejecting negative postcards? Was it simply the tendency of South Dakota Democrats to lose when there’s a Democratic president? The pernicious effects of redistricting? A favorable political environment with higher GOP turnout? Just better candidates for Republicans?

I don’t know. But on a night when they also lost all the statewide races, Democrats may have to fall back on cheering for the defeat of the two referred laws and celebrating Barack Obama’s second term. In South Dakota, they don’t have much else.

The fate of the Legislature

Even if they have a terrible night, South Dakota Democrats will probably gain legislative seats tonight.

It’s a term called a “dead cat bounce” — “even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height.”

The Democrats just lost so many seats in 2010 that they usually win, they’ll almost certainly gain some of them back.

But how many will they gain?

There are currently 24 legislative Democrats. In 2009 there were 38 Democratic lawmakers. In 2007 there were 35.

If the Democrats gain five or fewer seats, that probably has to be considered a disappointment. The Democrats have gone all-out on the Legislature this year with a very aggressive postcarding campaign, and winning a few seats that have been traditionally Democratic just won’t be any real success. There will be excuses made, but there’s sugarcoating this disappointment.

If they fall in the five to 10 seat pickup range, that’s probably a good night, especially if they are at the upper level — or if the gains are concentrated in one particular house of the Legislature, thus concentrating their power. (If the Democrats had 30 seats in the House, they don’t need to recruit many dissident Republicans in order to block GOP priorities.)

If the Democrats gain more than 10 seats — in a presidential election year where Mitt Romney is expected to romp in South Dakota — that has to be considered a fantastic night for Democrats in the Legislature, and vindication for party chairman Ben Nesselhuf’s centralized strategy.

We’ll know in a few hours what the story will be.

Democratic robocall

A second get-out-the-vote robocall (earlier), this one sent out by the Minnehaha Democratic Party:

Transcript:

Darrell Solberg: Election Day is extremely important. You can choose the status quo or you can choose us to put people first. You can’t sell South Dakota as a low wage state and expect families to prosper. We can’t continue big corporate giveaways and expect South Dakotans to flourish. You can’t underfund education and expect our youth to thrive. You can’t continue cuts to Medicaid and help people. I’m Darrell Solberg chairman of the Minnehaha Democratic Party. We need your vote to create a balance of power in the Legislature. Paid for by the Minnehaha Democratic Party.