By Denise Ross

In a national media moment that would make PP proud - of a Democrat, even - SD state Rep. Garry Moore, D-Yankton, stood up for Gov. Mike Rounds in his veto of a law that would have required young children to ride in booster seats. Read/listen to the NPR report here.

I’m to the point anymore where I firmly believe that maybe government should just take the children at birth and raise them for us, Moore said. They’re not letting parents make their own decisions anymore. And it just seems ludicrous to me to make these laws telling parents what to do.

Moore was speaking to increased pressure coming from the National Transportation Safety Board trying to get three hold-out states - SD, Arizona, Florida - to pass booster seat laws.

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By Denise Ross

“My name is Jim Abourezk, and I used to work for the government.” That was the opening line - and an applause generator - at a Friday night fundraiser in Rapid City. The local labor temple, a favorite of local Democrats, is a dimly lit cinder block cavern made cozy by well-worn vinyl flooring and metal folding chairs. This makes it an unlikely venue for a statewide barnstorming tour of not one but two iconoclasts.

What the place lacked in warmth former Sens. Jim Abourezk and George McGovern delivered - Abourezk in a fiery, unapologetic screed against a corrupt GOP and McGovern in a heart-warming, professorial, self-effacing essay about the greater good. (Disclosure: I’m assuming that’s all that McGovern’s speech was, as I had to leave in the middle of it - baby’s bed time and all. That’s what it was up until my departure, and that’s McGovern’s signature style.)

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By Denise Ross

State Sen. Jason Gant, R-Sioux Falls, made a swing out to the Black Hills recently in his bid to become South Dakota’s next Secretary of State. (He attended a Pennington County GOP picnic that was held during the worst picnic weather short of a blizzard, so he’s serious about this.) See his campaign brochure on the jump.

Gant was an open government champion before it was cool - he even has been accused of being a closet Democrat - and he’s got a plan for how to make the Secretary of State’s Office even more open. I’d argue that it already is one of South Dakota’s most open government offices, with the Legislative Research Council probably leading the way. But in our beloved state, the bar for open government hasn’t been set very high.

Gant envisions an SOS office that takes full advantage of the world wide web for both openness and efficiency.

Hopefully we will put as many records as possible right there, get that stuff online, he said. We have to remember who our boss is and who’s paying for it.

Gant would put all the public records maintained by the SOS online - from corporate filings to campaign finance reports - on the website in searchable form, not the pdfs we now have access to. In addition, he would set up a system under which those forms could be filled out entirely online, thus saving the staff the trouble of re-typing the information into another computer. (Right now we can do some of this online, but ultimately the forms get printed out and mailed in - and then re-typed.)

Gant also hopes to visit high school government classes where he would encourage the 18-year-olds to register to vote.

And he said he’d do more to assist small jursidictions with elections while promoting best practices when it comes to those local elections. Like most states, South Dakota doesn’t have an entirely uniform set of elections practices, but Gant thinks maybe we should think about doing that.

For the GOP nomination, Gant faces Teresa Bray who currently works in the SOS office and who Gant expects will have the support of current SOS Chris Nelson. But he’s not worried about that. At the moment, he’s traveling the state meeting with Republican delegates. As in old machine-style politics, in these statewide offices below the governor, it is delegates that win one a primary victory.

To read Gant’s campaign brochure, click “CLICK HERE” below.  

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By Denise Ross

Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-SD, shed her usually genteel tone during a conference call with reporters Thursday when she was asked about criticism that moderate Blue Dog Dems (of which she is one) were being unduly influenced on the ongoing health care debate by campaign contributions from the health insurance industry.

“Ridiculous!” she said, adding that she had recently delivered a verbal beat-down to her fellow House Dems, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, during a recent closed-door caucus meeting.

I don’t appreciate any of my colleagues bringing that kind of argument into this debate, she said. It’s so disappointing to hear this, from fellow Democrats in particular.

SHS said that Blue Dogs claim among their ranks some of the most strident critics of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

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By Denise Ross

I had a number of back-channel communications letting me know that Dennis Daugaard will not be the first South Dakota gubernatorial candidate to hire a Beltway media firm for his campaign.

In fact, Paul Wilson (see post below for more details) was hired by George Mickelson for both of his campaigns in the 1980s and by Mickelson’s lieutenant governor Walter Dale Miller when he ran in a primary against Bill Janklow in 1994.

So, welcome back to South Dakota Mr. Wilson.

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By Denise Ross

Rounding out my interview with Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard, let’s look at his campaign team. He’s hired his son and his son-in-law, and he knows what you all think of that. He’s also hired a professional political media outfit and that tried-and-true Sioux Falls ad agency to GOP govs, Lawrence & Schiller.

Daugaard’s son, Chris, graduated in May from SDSU (Go Jacks!) after achieving his own electoral success as student body president. (He majored in poli sci.) After a stint kickin’ it in Europe, Chris is on board with his dad’s campaign and with any luck just might wind up with a state government job in Pierre in 18 months. That is just one possibility, of course. (Chris writes in to say he’ll be off to grad school after the campaign is over. A sound plan. Law? Business? Anything certain on that front?)

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By Denise Ross

There’s a good explanation for the lull at the Hoghouse, untimely as the GOP gubernatorial candidates are making noise and health care is going hog wild on Capitol Hill. Hoghouse HQ now has a lovely new front deck, and Mr. Hoghouse is quite the taskmaster! (I’ll post a photo soon.)

Meanwhile, back to my interview with Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard earlier this month. One of Daugaard’s challenges has been, oddly enough, his unfaltering loyalty to a popular governor. Since his election in 2002, Gov. Mike Rounds has remained popular with the electorate. He’s also managed to frustrate and madden several groups used to operating more symbiotically with state government. A lot of the individuals key to those groups also happen to write campaign donation checks. And Daugaard laughs knowingly when asked about suffering backlash from those upset with Rounds.

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By Denise Ross

Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard has been largely absent from this summer’s fairs-and-parades circuit, and it’s been by design. The GOP gubernatorial candidate isn’t interested in starting his 2010 campaign much before 2010.

And even though he’s not been shy about his intentions to seek South Dakota’s chief executive job and has been raising money towards that goal literally for years, Daugaard won’t officially announce his candidacy for another month.

Dennis Daugaard in action in the SD Senate. (I neglected to get my own photo of Daugaard, which is too bad because he held my baby through much of our visit.)

Daugaard was in Rapid City this week, along with his son Chris - a recent SDSU grad (go Jacks!), and he looked up the Hoghouse for a chat.

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By Denise Ross

No doubt you’ve seen the ads running on SoDak news and blog sites, and they sound pretty good. South Dakota’s own John Thune wants you to help him ”Stop the bailouts.”

Personally, I would like to have a direct hand in reversing the Wall Street bonuses, but I digress. Here’s one of the ads:

I wrote about Thune’s anti-bailout passions in a recent newspaper column:

I was puzzled by the ads. Didn’t Thune vote for the $700 billion bailout, the Troubled Asset Relief Program? Yes he did. So why is he now campaigning to stop something for which he voted?

Thune campaign manager Justin Brasell offers an explanation - that the Bush administration did a bait and switch. And while they certainly did do that, I’m still puzzled that Thune would choose this as a campaign theme. (To be fair to Brasell, he was puzzled that I was puzzled. It all makes perfect sense to him, so perhaps I am missing something or being unnecessarily obtuse.)

Perhaps Brasell and I see things differently because the Mississippi native wasn’t yet on South Dakota soil when Thune defended his pro-bailout vote with passion equal to that with which he is now fighting federal bailouts.

From the Oct. 1, 2008, press release:

It would have been easy to do the `politically popular’ thing and vote against this bill, but for me it would not have been the responsible thing to do.

(The underlining is Thune’s.)

I know Thune’s “end-the-bailout” line is resonating. I’ve heard folks talking about it. (See the page about this on Thune’s campaign website.) So perhaps the collective amnesia is suffient, or perhaps there have been too many big federal spending packages greased through the pipe for them to care about a vote on the original bailout. But I still struggle to see how a principled stand 11 months ago can turn into campaign fodder in the opposite direction.

Should this be a case of, You’ve made your bed; now ly in it? Am I wrong to wonder whether this would be the tone if Bush or some other Republican still held the White House? Will voters ponder which one of Thune’s pronouncements is coming from a place of principal?

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

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