Three posts?! I really should stop Glodting….
Amidst all the useful revelations of anti-conservative, budget-busting bureaucracy entailed in his “crime victims bill of rights” initiative, Marsy’s Law campaign chair Jason Glodt revealed that the initiative isn’t really his campaign. During the Q&A at the top of yesterday’s Jolene’s Law Task Force meeting, Glodt prefaced a question about cost and resources with this phrase:
“Before I agreed to become state director for this campaign….”
Glodt’s words suggest he didn’t create the campaign, the way Steve Hildebrand and Steve Hickey created their campaign to cap interest rates on payday loans at 36%, or the way I created the campaigns to repeal Referred Laws 19 and 20. Glodt’s words suggest he was approached by someone else and agreed to serve their agenda.
But agreed with whom? I haven’t heard any South Dakota organization jump out as advocates of Glodt’s crime victims bill of rights. Logical sources of support, like advocates for victims of domestic abuse, haven’t spoken up. They certainly weren’t marching to the Capitol with Marsy’s Law during past sessions… and if they had, the Legislature’s eagerness to support rights for crime victims (as shown by the unanimous passage of Senate Bill 26 in 2014) indicates they’d have had no problem passing the measure.
Marsy’s Law looks like astroturf from out of state. Putting the law on our ballot and our books may put a feather in someone else’s cap, but it seems irrelevant at best to the needs of South Dakotans. Glodt’s comment about agreeing to direct this campaign and the absence of any sign of local genesis of this costly idea reinforces the conclusion that it’s not real South Dakota policy.