Earlier this year, Republicans chose former state representative Heather Baxter as their candidate for Secretary of State. Baxter has previously said she is in favor of getting rid of the machines that count South Dakota's ballots in favor of hand-counting ballots.
Current South Dakota Secretary of State Monae Johnson, a Republican, is not backing Baxter. Johnson lost to Baxter at the convention and is now endorsing Democrat Terrence Davis.
Davis is a state trooper who moved his family to South Dakota in order to find a place where “values like safety, community, and hard work are still prioritized.”
SDPB’s Dakota Political Junkies joined Lori Walsh in the studio to discuss the fallout. Jon Hunter is publisher emeritus of the Madison Daily Leader. He’s an inductee of the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame. Michael Card, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of political science at the University of South Dakota.
A transcript of this interview follows.
JON HUNTER
Sometimes defeated candidates in the primary will either go silent or they will say, I'm on the team and will support. I think it is rare that you would endorse (the opposing party). I don't remember it happening in South Dakota, certainly for a constitutional office or statewide office.
LORI WALSH
What kind of reasoning is she giving for that?
JON HUNTER
She had worked, remember, under two secretaries of state. But I think she has actually learned a lot more in this leadership position. And obviously the convention chose someone else, but that's a strange place to be. A small number of delegates determine pretty big things in South Dakota.
But she was crystal clear — and I thought bold — in her letter. She said, "I believe the integrity, stability, and professionalism of this office is at stake." That she's the secretary of state and she believes that the integrity of that (office) is up for grabs.
And that's a, that's a major statement. I mean, imagine any other statewide office saying the treasurer's office or the governor's — or whatever — saying the integrity, professionalism of this office is at stake.
I think it's a bold move. I think she has, over the course of four years in that leadership position, come to realize this. Where she is now? You wouldn't think someone who'd worked there for eight years previously would learn a lot in that position. But I think she has.
LORI WALSH
She's sounding the alarm.
JON HUNTER
Three alarm fire.
LORI WALSH
Mike Card, what did you think of when you heard, when you read that?
MIKE CARD
I think Monae Johnson had, for lack of a better term, a "come to Jesus" moment while she was in the office. She was certainly supporting hand counting all the ballots (during her campaign). But over the years, I think as Jon noted, she's come to realize that some of these positions that are very important to the Republican faithful who would go to the convention and still want to hand count ballots despite the fact, and it's a fact, hand counting is not nearly as accurate as machine counting, among other things.
You know, the Secretary of State's office also is responsible for recording campaign finance — and you can't get to everything — but we have a terrible system of reporting campaign finance.
It's basically portable document formats. You have to know exactly what you're looking for, the name of the committee, business corporation filings, lobbyist registration. It's important for the work of our democracy. Hand counting ballots, especially if you are a 2020 presidential election denier, it would seem that it's just a conflict that doesn't meet current conditions.
Both candidates in the convention needed to own up to that, but I can also see that most of the people who go to the convention, not all, are believers that we need to hand count ballots because the election was stolen in 2020.
LORI WALSH
Does her endorsement move the needle? Not only do people have to read that news, they have to be tuned in to that race. And then they have to decide whether they want to listen to what Secretary of State Johnson has to say. And then they have to go into the ballot box and fill out somebody's name with a D after it. That's hard for some people to do. I guess what I'm getting at is, John, do you think South Dakotans are ready to split their ticket?
JON HUNTER
I do.
For these constitutional offices, we're often not familiar with them because they don't have primaries. We just don't know about them until October. And so this will be big news at a big time.
Now, you're right. There are many South Dakota voters who are influenced by the letter after the name of the candidate. And we'll choose people based on that. How well can that be communicated, advertised, promoted, and so forth, that that was the situation? And then will it matter to people? It depends upon, I guess, how it's presented.
So some people do listen to endorsements and follow those. What I'm really interested in is what's coming up in the next few weeks for how that will be communicated. Terrence Davis has to promote that. I mean, I can't see a situation why he wouldn't.
Yeah, so I think it's one of the most interesting races we've had because of this.
MIKE CARD
These constitutional offices are essentially administrative agencies. Other states didn't have the territorial history that we have, which is We need to weaken the governor.
Because the governor was corrupt in so many times in South Dakota, in Dakota Territorial days. So we wanted to vote on almost everything. When we look back, we were electing justices of the peace, we still elect precinct committee men and women, that these are basically people we should be selecting based on their administrative competence, not their political views. That's Mike's view. Not everyone shares that.
JON HUNTER
It's John's view as well.
MIKE CARD
Because we need somebody to run these functions, you know, the campaign finance. We need lobbyist registration, business corporation filings, even gun permits. And these are the responsibility of the Secretary of State, in addition to filing all official orders — you know — the executive orders the governor makes, making sure that the statutes that the legislature passes are available and appropriate to the public. That's more of a shared duty now than it was probably even 20 years ago. But they also inform voters and make sure that the election process runs.
JON HUNTER
Could we surmise that at the convention most of the delegates considered the Secretary of State's sole responsibility is to be elections?
I would guess that that was the only issue that would have been discussed at the convention rather than How well could you register guns? How well can you register lobbyists? How timely can you have business filings?
I bet none of those questions were asked of the candidates.
LORI WALSH
This makes national news. Jonshon says, I'm fully aware of what this is doing to my own political career. She's making this stand. It's compelling. It's a compelling story here, and it's a compelling story across the country as well.
We talked about that letter behind somebody's name, and I want to go back because SDPB had a debate for the U.S. Senate race — Brian Bengs against Senator Mike Rounds, but Senator Mike Rounds declined to accept our invitation. SDPB's Jackie Hendry sat down with Brian Bengs for an hour and did an in-depth interview with him, giving him the opportunity to do an opening statement and a closing statement.
Jon, Senator Rounds not showing up for that debate. Good plan for him? A misstep for him? What do you think?
JON HUNTER
I think it was a mistake. I want to go back at least a little bit in U.S. Senate history in South Dakota. There has been a long-term trend of us South Dakotans electing people to Senate, keeping them there until the point at which we say they're no longer South Dakotans. They're not one of us.
I can name several. I mean, Larry Pressler suffered that, Tim Johnson to a degree. Tom Daschle certainly did. Geo