Welcoming Democratic Senator Billie Sutton to the gubernatorial campaign is one of his main competitors, Republican Attorney General Marty Jackley:
Not yet welcoming Sutton to the race is the other frontrunning Republican, Congresswoman Kristi Noem. Either Noem is feeling jealous of her title as the hat-wearing horse rider, or Jackley is subtly emphasizing that while Kristi has been away in Washington getting nothing done, he’s been back here in South Dakota making friends and practical legislative connections with folks on both sides of the aisle, connections that will be far more useful to the next Governor of South Dakota than whatever connections Noem has spent her Congressional career making.
Not that connections in Washington are all bad. Another noteworthy Tweet on Sutton’s gubernatorial announcement comes from Politico reporter Kevin Robillard:
Democrats have an interesting candidate for #SDGov in Billie Sutton. https://t.co/7930kcLbfl
— Kevin Robillard (@PoliticoKevin) May 31, 2017
Sutton an “interesting candidate”? That’s not a prediction of a landslide, but when’s the last time you heard a South Dakota gubernatorial candidate winning the interest of a national media reporter? The fact that a national reporter shares a South Dakota Democrat’s opening campaign video helps explain why Dan Lederman and the SDGOP are vomiting all over themselves over Sutton’s announcement: they know Sutton has what it takes to get noticed.
Although a Democrat in SD for Governor is always a long shot Sutton is getting noticed. That introductory video has 75,000 views on Facebook and his page has already gathered over 3,000 likes since yesterday. I think the more the voters hear from him the more they will like him.
MPR will be watching, I’ve notified them.
I don’t know much about Mr Sutton, but have been “following” him for the last couple of years on social media, the print media, Cory’s blog, and so forth. What I do know I like and I look forward to learning more about him.
South Dakotans are still mad (even the R’s!!!) about IM22, turning over other votes (minimum wage for youth), the scandals, etc. Mr Sutton is starting off on the right foot and talking about things being “swept under the rug in Pierre” is perfect.
I look forward to his campaign and will make a point to try and meet him when he is in the Black Hills.
That just it Dana. The IM repeal just might come back to haunt the legislature.
Good web stats, BlackHills76. I saw the FB video was over 81K in less than 24 hours. That’s a lot of eyeballs for a Democratic candidate announcing 17 months before the election. If he could turn every one of those views into a vote, he’d already have about 11K more votes than Susan Wismer got in 2014.