New landscape confronts South Dakota Republicans after political earthquake shakes incumbents
State Rep. Scott Odenbach, R-Spearfish, speaks in the state House chamber on Feb. 7, 2024. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)
A literal 3.7-magnitude earthquake shook the state Capitol in Pierre last week. State Rep. Scott Odenbach, R-Spearfish, said a political earthquake shook the Capitol on Tuesday night.
“The people are waking up,” Odenbach said.
He and others within a faction of the South Dakota Republican Party say it’s being run by politicians who are not as conservative as the party’s base of supporters. Their efforts to change that contributed to 14 losses by incumbent Republican legislators in Tuesday’s primary election. Odenbach’s political action committee spent $58,000 ahead of the primary in support of some winning candidates.
Current Republican House Majority Leader Will Mortenson, R-Fort Pierre — who is unopposed for reelection — said new legislators are always welcome, but losing 14 incumbents comes with a cost.
“It’s an opportunity for new ideas, but it does mean we lost a lot of institutional knowledge,” he said.
Those losses include Sen. Jean Hunhoff, R-Yankton, who’s served 24 years in the Legislature, and Sen. Ryan Maher, R-Isabel, who has served 16 years, among others.
Mortenson’s political action committee spent $48,271 to help some of the incumbents and other candidates that Odenbach opposed.
Mortenson blamed the incumbent losses mostly on historically low voter turnout of 17%, which he said creates an environment in which a motivated faction can turn out enough voters to swing a primary race.
Pipelines and property taxes
Odenbach said challengers won because of quality candidate recruitment, a good ground game and the right messaging.
Much of that messaging, especially in eastern South Dakota, capitalized on opposition to Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed multibillion-dollar pipeline project. It would collect carbon dioxide produced by ethanol plants in South Dakota and other states and move it through an underground pipeline for sequestration in North Dakota, passing through farms, ranches and other private property along the way.
The project has caused more than two years of legal and legislative wrangling over landowner rights and eminent domain, the legal maneuver through which a company can seize property for projects in the public interest.
“A lot of candidates have been saying South Dakota is open for business, but not for sale, and that was proven last night,” Odenbach said.
Mortenson and some other Republican leaders passed a bill during the last legislative session to preserve a regulatory path forward for the pipeline while ensuring landowners receive additional protections. That put them at odds with some in their own party who sought stricter measures such as a ban on eminent domain for carbon pipelines. Some members of that faction are gathering petition signatures to refer the bill passed last session to a public vote in November.
Odenbach said the pipeline debate is not over.
“We’re going to be back next session to better define public use and who gets to use eminent domain in South Dakota, like I tried to do during the recent session,” he said.
Incumbent Rep. Aaron Aylward, R-Harrisburg, won his primary. He’s the president of the South Dakota Freedom Caucus, which has butted heads with Republican leadership. On the topic of pipelines, he said, “It’s not looking good for the carbon ones, that’s for sure.”
Aylward said incumbents lost Tuesday because “people are tired of the same type of bureaucratic garbage they’ve been fed for the last number of years.”
Meanwhile, in the Black Hills, rising property taxes animated many Republican voters. Former legislator Tim Goodwin, of Rapid City, earned one of District 30’s two Republican House nominations Tuesday. He and incumbent Rep. Trish Ladner, of Hot Springs, will face one Democrat in the November race for two House seats.
“Out here, property rights isn’t even on the radar,” Goodwin said. “It’s property taxes.”
Greasing the open primaries wheel
Some Republicans think the inner-party friction is self-defeating. Pat Powers, writer of the Dakota War College political blog, said Tuesday’s primary results offer Democrats an opportunity to win some general election races if they run to the middle of the political spectrum. Democrats currently hold only 11 of the Legislature’s 105 seats.
“It could very well mark a shift in the Republican party’s fortunes,” Powers said.
Powers said Republican infighting also gives an open primaries ballot measure a better chance of passing during the November general election. The measure would change some primaries to include all the candidates for an office, rather than splitting the candidates into party-specific primaries.
Tuesday’s low turnout and poor showing by incumbents gives ammunition to open primaries supporters, Powers said.
“They can say, ‘Look at what happens when we don’t have open primaries,’ and they have the money to get the message across.”
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Drey Samuelson, who worked as Democratic former U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson’s chief of staff for many years, is involved in the open primaries effort. He’s already making that argument.
“The closed primary system does not work very well. It nominates people who are to the extremes of the parties,” Samuelson said. “We can look at these primary results to see that.”
Samuelson said turnout would have been better if Democrats and independents had more to vote on than the Democratic presidential primary, in which President Joe Biden was already all but guaranteed a victory. There was only one Democratic legislative primary Tuesday in South Dakota, and 44 Republican legislative primaries.
Seeking change ‘for the average person’
Joy Hohn, a vocal opponent of eminent domain for carbon dioxide pipelines, bested former legislator Mark Willadsen for the Republican nomination for Sioux Falls District 9’s Senate seat. There is no Democratic or independent candidate running in the general election.
Hohn received a donation from Odenbach’s political action committee.
“I think that the citizens of South Dakota are seeing the need for a bigger focus on ‘we the people,’” Hohn said. “We don’t really need this pipeline.”
Hohn said the results of the election move the state in the right direction, “toward true conservative values and our country’s founding principles.”
Incumbent Sen. Erin Tobin, R-Winner, fell by 48 votes (which is within the possible recount margin) to a political newcomer from Bonesteel named Mykala Voita, who also campaigned on the primacy of landowner rights.
“The people of South Dakota drew a line and they are speaking,” Voita said. “I think the people are sending a clear message that we don’t want to be trampled on, and if they’re going to come into our state, they’re going to play by our rules.”
In a four-way District 13 House of Representatives primary, incumbent Republican Tony Venhuizen, of Sioux Falls, advanced to the general election as one of the top two finishers. But he received five fewer votes than newcomer John Hughes. There is no Democrat or independent on the ballot in November.
Hughes plans to push for change.
“Government just isn’t working for the average person in South Dakota, especially in terms of economic development,” Hughes said. “It’s helping large corporate interests that are not paying their fair share when they come into South Dakota and take advantage of our business climate, and it’s at the expense of the taxpayer.”
Ousted Republican legislators
Republican legislators who lost their primary races Tuesday, according to unofficial results from the Secretary of State’s Office (results are not official until the election is canvassed):
Sen. Erin Tobin, R-Winner
Sen. Jean Hunhoff, R-Yankton
Rep. Byron Callies, R-Watertown
Rep. Tyler Tordsen, R-Sioux Falls
Rep. Tamara St. John, R-Sisseton
Rep. James Wangsness, R-Miller
Rep. Fred Deutsch, R-Florence
Sen. Ryan Maher, R-Isabel
Rep. Becky Drury, R-Rapid City
Sen. Mike Walsh, R-Rapid City
Sen. David Johnson, R-Rapid City
Rep. Gary Cammack, R-Union Center
Rep. Kirk Chaffee, R-Whitewood
Sen. Julie Frye-Mueller, R-Rapid City
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