The latest fundraising e-mail from U.S. House candidate Shantel Krebs touts her backing by big Republican donors seeking to counteract the efforts of pro-choice Emily’s List to elect women who respect women’s rights to Congress. Hmm… is Krebs sure she wants to brag up her support from these out-of-state millionaires?
Winning for Women arose from a series of joint fundraising committees set up over the past two cycles and supported by some of the Republican Party’s biggest donors, including Linda McMahon, Betsy DeVos, Robert and Rebekah Mercer, TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts and his son, Todd, and the hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer [Eliana Johnson, “Big GOP Donors Launch Group to Elect Republican Women,” Politico, 2017.10.25].
McMahon, Mercer, DeVos—all Trumpista oligarchs, all from elsewhere, all pouring outside money to twist South Dakota’s politics to their selfish ends. Hey, G. Mark! Where’s the outrage trying to hijack our House race?
Mickelson is hosting fundraisers for Krebs’s male primary opponent, Dusty Johnson. Mickelson’s mom Linda and brother David have each given Johnson’s campaign $500.
Through Q3, 94.7% of Krebs’s itemized individual contributions came from individuals listing South Dakota addresses. Over the last four quarters, Johnson’s count on that metric is 90.1%. In his first quarter of campaigning, Democrat Tim Bjorkman has raised 91.5% of his itemized individual contributions from South Dakotans.
The Krebs e-mail also touts a Roll Call article that declares Krebs the frontrunner in the House race:
Ask Republican strategists about viable female House recruits for next year, and the first name that consistently comes up is South Dakota Secretary of State Shantel Krebs.
As the front-runner for the GOP nomination in the at-large seat, her candidacy gives the party a rare opportunity to replace a retiring female Republican with another woman [Simone Pathé, “Republicans Look to Make up Loss of House Women,” Roll Call 2017.10.24].
I’m not sure on what basis Pathé makes that frontrunner conclusion. Krebs has lived up to the early signs of fundraising prowess I reported in April and, as of September 30, and raised more money this year than Johnson, $404,046.21 to $369,654.18. But throw in the $104,942 Johnson pulled induring Quarter 4 of 2016, and he’s still ahead of Krebs in receipts.* In the absence of reliable polling, the only recent thermometer in the turkey of voter opinion is the GOP State Fair straw poll, and Johnson won that 54% to 46%. The National Republican Congressional Committee isn’t picking favorites: they’ve recognized both Johnson and Krebs as viable candidates in their early “On the Radar” picks.
*Correction 17:15 CDT: Oh! In my original post, I forgot to count the 2016 Q4 money in Dusty’s column! Count that money, and he’s still the total cash frontrunner. I regret the error and wonder further by what metric Roll Call deems Krebs the frontrunner.
Ask Republican strategists about viable female House recruits for next year, and the first name that consistently comes up is South Dakota Secretary of State Shantel Krebs.
Gawd! She is in a really, seriously, embarrassingly red state that wouldn’t elect a Democrat if the state’s life depended on it. That is worth touting?
Shantel is in a tough position that the state’s #2 political website, which happens to be the SD GOP’s #1 political website, is bought off by Dusty and in the bag for him. So even though both Shantel and Dusty got the “young gun” designation, the #2 website doesn’t even mention Shantel. Of course the #2 website will claim in its own defense that it’s just a press release outlet – nothing more. Shantel ought to at least flush her press releases down the War Toilet without sending any money their way.
And it seems to me that Shantel is running a Carole Hillard campaign while Dusty is running a John Thune campaign. He’s out-hustling her and out-thinking her. The fact she has raised marginally more money isn’t going to console her when she loses the primary, which she will do if she doesn’t get with it.
Very good point, Ror, about DWC’s selective sponsor-favoring coverage. In an ideal world, endorsement by DWC would make the other candidate the front-runner.
Emphasize Ror’s description of Krebs’s cash lead as “marginal.” A 9% lead in cash does not offer any reliable prediction of who’s going to win in a primary eight months away. That 9% cash lead certainly doesn’t seem a reasonable journalistic basis for declaring a candidate a “frontrunner.”
Depending on what Dusty’s position is on ‘dark out-of-state money is, he could make this a campaign issue.
Whoops! Check my data—I forgot to report Dusty’s 2016 Q4 money! Add in that $105K, and he remains ahead of Krebs in total receipts by nearly 18%. I have corrected my text above and regret the error.
I hope there are debates between those two.
Too bad team Krebs turned down forum debates at Dakotafest and State Fair.
roh oh, turns out that Paul Singer was the money man to fund the Steele Dossier. So Shantel, has been punked, too damn funny. This is from the NY Times
” WASHINGTON — The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by a major Republican donor, was the first to hire the firm that conducted opposition research on Donald J. Trump — including a salacious dossier describing ties between Mr. Trump and the Russian government — website representatives told the House Intelligence Committee on Friday.
According to people briefed on the conversation, the website hired the firm, Fusion GPS, in October 2015 to unearth damaging information about several Republican presidential candidates, including Mr. Trump. But The Free Beacon told the firm to stop doing research on Mr. Trump in May 2016, as Mr. Trump was clinching the Republican nomination.
In April 2016, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee also retained Fusion GPS to research any possible connections between Mr. Trump, his businesses, his campaign team and Russia. Working for them, Fusion GPS retained a respected former British spy named Christopher Steele.
He went on to produce a series of memos that alleged a broad conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to influence the 2016 election on behalf of Mr. Trump. The memos, which became known as the “Steele dossier,” also contained unsubstantiated accounts of encounters between Mr. Trump and Russian prostitutes, as well as real estate deals that were intended as bribes.
The Free Beacon is funded in large part by the New York hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, according to an associate of Mr. Singer. The associate said Mr. Singer, a leading Republican donor, was not aware of the dossier or Mr. Steele’s involvement until January, when BuzzFeed published the dossier.”
A very interesting read on how Russia has taken us over, yes us’ins in South Dakota, without using one bullet. Armed to the teeth here and completely taken over without a whimper, 2nd Amendment, my arse. Life is funny sometimes.