By Denise RossState Senate Majority Leader Dave Knudson, R-Sioux Falls, was in Rapid City this week, and he dialed up the Hoghouse for a chat. Knudson says he’s spending the last week of each month “out west” in preparation for the June 2010 GOP gubernatorial primary.While he’s getting more comfortable with South Dakota’s great tradition of retail politics - what he refers to as “the fairs” - he’s also coming to realize the geographic vastness that is South Dakota.

I’ve gotten so I enjoy going to fairs. They were very awkward for me.

He then ticks off the events he’s hit recently - DakotaFest, the Sioux Empire Fair, the Central States Fair and River Boat Days. In addition to spending a week each month West River, Knudson estimates he travels about half of every week.

There are certain events you need to go to, and they’re never neatly geographically aligned.

So it goes. No doubt his fellow GOP candidates - Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard, Brookings Mayor Scott Munsterman and Buffalo Gap rancher Ken Knuppe - are finding that out as well. As is the lone Democrat in the race, state Senate Minority Leader Scott Heidepriem, D-Sioux Falls.

On the jump is a look at some of the literature Knudson’s handing out as he traverses the Rushmore State (a namesake that comes from, I might note, West River territory.) To see them, click “CLICK HERE” below.

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By Denise RossIf you’re growing weary of screaming about health care reform, there’s another song on the political season of discontent’s hit parade: climate legislation, known by various names depending on the political leanings of who’s talking.South Dakota’s congressional delegation has as diverse a set of views as possible, considering their tiny numbers. Johnson’s for it; Thune’s against it; Herseth Sandlin wants to be for it but isn’t just yet.

“Soon the Senate will consider climate change legislation that could finally help South Dakota to live up to its wind generating potential and capture the benefits of a cash crop that is just blowing across our landscape,” Johnson wrote in a recent op-ed.

Thune, on the other hand, has vowed to fight the bill “with every fiber of my being.” (Insert joke about windy politicians here.)There’s also Matt McGovern, of the Mitchell McGoverns, heading up the SoDak office of Repower America, that group Al Gore’s involved with. He showed up at a confab in Rapid City this week to tout the benefits of the bill to a group of hostiles. Kevin Woster covered the meeting. Read that here.

 ”This is a great bill for South Dakota,” McGovern said.

I learned all of this when I wrote a recent newspaper column about it. To read the full column, click “CLICK HERE” below.

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By Denise Ross

As Sen. John Thune, R-SD, adds town hall meetings on health care to his August recess schedule, I offer the newspaper column I wrote recently about his position on the pending reform.

Thune has long been for some specific flavors of health care reform, but at the moment and into the foreseeable future he is against health care reform of pretty much any stripe. That is no doubt because Democrats are writing the bill(s). It’s possible that Thune would change his tune should the Senate Finance Committee’s tortured bipartisan toiling bear fruit, but it’s not likely.

There is little overlap between what Thune has been calling for - telehealth, tort reform, small business health plans and cheap prescription drugs - and the bills in play.

To read the full colum, click “CLICK HERE” below.

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By Denise Ross

Of course when the crowd heard it, it seemed obvious. Tom Hennies wanted his final farewell, the last hymn sung at his funeral, to be God Bless America. And so it was.

Besides the size of the crowd - the Rapid City Journal’s reporting 800 - the broad swath of society present at Tuesday’s funeral is notable. That the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center was needed to house the crowd, that was a given. So, too - for anyone who knew Hennies, was the mix. Dusty cowboy boots and shiny dress shoes. Shirt sleeves and blue jeans (even a pair of bib overalls) and expensive suits. Whites and natives. Young, middle, old.

Lawmakers (past and present) in attendance who I saw were Larry Rhoden, Jim Lintz, Eric Bogue, Fred Whiting, Stan Adelstein, Elizabeth Kraus, Gordon Howie, Alan Hanks (now mayor), Don Hennies (of course). I also saw Qusi Al-Haj of John Thune’s Rapid City office. I’m sure there were others there who I did not see, as the crowd was literally that big - a sea of people.

Afterwards, I took this picture to try to illustrate just how many uniformed cops of various stripes were there, but the photo really doesn’t do justice to what seemed like an endless stream of uniforms - many blue but also lots of other colors.

When I remember Hennies, I think of both his incisive judgments, which could sometimes seem arbitrary but always proved to be thoroughly thought-out, and his equally incisive sense of humor, examples of which would either be lost in translation here or are not entirely appropriate to retell on the solemn occasion of his passing. Suffice it to say, there were many times when I and others were left only to shake our heads.

OK, here is one, done at the very public event of a legislative crackerbarrel. Some other lawmaker had drawn a diagram on a chalkboard to try to illustrate South Dakota’s school funding scheme, which lends itself to multi-faceted diagrams. Hennies got up, drew over an hour-glass-shaped part of the diagram to make it bolder and said, “Aw, hell, I thought this here was supposed to be Arlene Ham.”

There are a whole lotta folks, Hennies, who are going to miss both your judgment and your jokes.

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By Denise Ross

When Sen. Tim Johnson penned a column earlier this week touting the good things the “climate change legislation” would mean for South Dakota, one might have gotten the impression he was referring to what’s come to be known as the cap-and-trade bill that’s been passed by the US House and awaits action in the US Senate just as soon as everyone gets back to DC after the August recess.

Well, I heard from Johnson’s office after I posted his column. They want to avoid any confusion and say Johnson refers in his column not to the bill that has passed the House but to a future bill that will be rewritten in the Senate. The bill will “get a completely fresh start” in the Senate, said Johnson’s spokeswoman. (Sounds like a good old-fashioned hoghouse in the state Legislature. The folks in Pierre always knew they could teach Washington a thing or two.)

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By Denise Ross

Tom Hennies had an infectious personality. I don’t know any reporter who covered him who didn’t appreciate his straightforward answers to questions and his penchant for corny jokes. Apparently his no-nonsense approach was popular among constituents, too, as he routinely won election to the Legislature by wide margins.

And I still remember vividly how a crackerbarrel audience burst into a standing ovation when he announced he would run for city council. He lost that race against a popular, well-organized incumbent, but he went on to serve on Rapid City’s planning commission.

I saw him at an election forum last fall and had no idea he was still suffering from the effects of Legionnaire’s. He continued right on with public service until the end.

No doubt there were many occasions on which several folks disagreed with Hennies, but that was always OK with him. He would make his arguments, you could make yours. All he asked for was a fair fight, which he didn’t always get in Pierre. He would have been fearless in the face of what’s passing for town hall meetings this summer. Years on the police force, dealing with the great span of humanity, honed his people skills to a brew of a highly sensitive BS detector, a heavy dose of compassion for the disadvantaged and a screw-’em-if-they-can’t-take-a-joke detachment from the disfunctionalities inherent in our governmental systems. I’ve seen him disarm more than his share of angry, torch-bearing villagers.

It’s difficult to imagine Rapid City without Tom Hennies. I guess we’ll all have to muddle through.

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By Denise Ross

From my e-mail box, this column by Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., says that the cap-and-trade bill would mean more jobs in South Dakota. This after the Argus Leader reported a week or more ago that our electric bills would go up.  (Read his entire column on the jump.)

Writes Johnson:

Soon the Senate will consider climate change legislation that could finally help South Dakota to live up to its wind generating potential and capture the benefits of a cash crop that is just blowing across our landscape. 

…

South Dakota’s growing clean energy economy has added good-paying jobs at an annual job growth rate of 7.9 percent over the past decade. 

…

The question is: are we sending more of our hard earned money to Big Oil and oil rich countries or are we investing in our own backyards?

He goes on to predict the effort to kill the bill will reach the fevered pitch of an anti-health-care crowd at a town hall meeting. And he says doing nothing would be counterproductive.

These scare tactics just present a status quo approach that leaves us all vulnerable to oil spikes in a global market and high gas prices that crush family budgets like we saw last summer.

So, if we thought the season of discontent would end with the fate of health care reform, I suspect more likely we’ll look back on this summer like we look back on the much maligned predictions that war in Iraq could cost $50B.

To read Johnson’s column, click “CLICK HERE” below.

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By Denise Ross

It’s a blue, blue, blue, blue world on Capitol Hill these days, and I’m not talking about Democrats. Or at least not most of them. It’s the Blue Dogs, a group that’s most likely crossed into overexposure as some sort of health care reform careens through a tension-filled August recess.

As I wrote in a recent newspaper column, South Dakota’s own Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., holds a key position within the Blue Dog coalition and, therefore, a key position in the ongoing health care reform debate. Her assessment so far: No deal. (Read the full column on the jump.)

Herseth Sandlin said that she can’t lend her support to any House legislation yet, but she’s watching to see whether some provisions now under negotiation make the final cut. Specifically, she’s looking for small business protections, a continuation of the private insurance market and a requirement that any public plan negotiate with providers and not simply impose Medicare payment rates. 

SHS said she’s most hopeful about what might come out of the Senate Finance Committee, which has continued bipartisan negotiations into the recess. Specifically, SHS and the BDs are looking for cost control, something she said is largely missing from the collection of competing bills unveiled so far.  

Blue Dogs believe it’s fundamental to reform to control rising costs but also to improve access and quality. It must be deficit neutral and bend the cost curve.

It’s been noted on other blogs that SHS hasn’t scheduled any town hall meetings to discuss this during her time back in the state. For those who are upset about this, what are the provisions and priorities that she’s outlined with which you disagree or agree? Perhaps blog comments can provide some sort of dialogue on the specifics of this key issue.  

To read the full column, click “CLICK HERE” below.

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By Denise Ross

Reliably red? Not any more, according to Gallup, which last year had South Dakota as “competitive.” Now, we’re blue. (I swear it’s true.)

There’s nary a red state left, with our neighbor Wyoming holding fast. After polling from January-June, Gallup now lists South Dakota as “Leans Democratic,” one step away from full-on blueness.

While one cannot discern this from examining our state Legislature and Governor, it does add a great dinner party topic as we head into 2010. Who knows, maybe even John Thune will have a contest.

Says Gallup:

Only four states show a sizeable Republican advantage in party identification, the same number as in 2008. That compares to 29 states plus the District of Columbia with sizeable Democratic advantages, also unchanged from last year.

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By Denise Ross

From my e-mail box, a press release from Sen. Tim Johnson’s office about his work on the Senate Banking Committee, specifically ongoing work to try to infuse some sense of common courtesy into the Wall Street culture. (Read the entire release on the jump.)

Says Johnson:

The regulatory structure overseeing U.S. financial markets has proven unable to keep pace with innovative but risky financial products, and this has had disastrous consequences. We need a bipartisan proposal that creates an updated system of good, effective regulations that balance consumer protection and allow for sustainable economic growth.

The entire release is a bit cryptic, which is compounded by its brevity. For example, I can’t tell for sure, but I think in this part below he endorses President Obama’s plan.

As a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee, Johnson has used his position to examine the Administration’s regulatory reform proposals, including the President’s plan to create the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The proposed agency would help stabilize the financial sector and modernize the regulatory system.

That is followed by another quotation that includes, “We cannot afford to get this wrong.”

So, a call for bipartisanship, a declarative sentence saying that Obama’s plan would “stabilize” and “modernize” the current system and a call for transparency, accountability and consumer protection.

Could real reform be at hand? It’s hard to tell, but what Johnson ought to do in the meantime is invite a few Wall Street high rollers out to DakotaFest and let them take the stage for a town hall meeting.

That would be far more satisfying than “transparency” and “accountability.”

To read today’s press release, click “CLICK HERE” below.

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