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Powers Says Woman Who Ousted His Boss Faces Obstacle to Running for Governor

In the Dogged Lack of Self-Awareness Department, Pat Powers expresses concern about a Secretary of State who might be engaging in concerted partisan activity while managing our elections:

One major difference is that while others have started or are starting to assemble campaign teams, it puts the Secretary of State in a position of potentially having to do so and raise money for it as we move through the next several months of the 2016 election cycle, and officially kick off the race for Governor in 2018 [Pat Powers, 2018 Watch: Does Krebs have her eye on higher office? Sioux Falls Rotarians think so after that last meeting,” Dakota War College, 2016.06.28].

Secretary of State Shantel Krebs, Twitter, 2015.11.04.
Krebs for Governor? Sure, that would be fun! (photo from Twitter, 2015.11.04.)

Ha ha ha, ho ho ho—remind us, please, why Pat Powers left the Secretary of State’s office in 2012 and never complained about his old boss’s partisan activities while phoning in his SOS duties?

Powers says this in response to a recent Sioux Falls Rotary meeting in which Secretary of State Shantel Krebs said many things that some observers read as smoke signals of her desire to run for Governor. This blog endorses the hypothesis that Shantel Krebs wants to run for Governor in 2018. She proved in 2013 that she was willing to take on incompetent do-nothings in her own party, and she’s recognizes that the best person to beat a mere do-nothing Snow Queen is a do-something Miss South Dakota.

Besides, Krebs likely wants to jump to higher office so she doesn’t have face the juggernaut of the Heidelberger for Secretary of State campaign.

Bonus Election Shamanry: Throw Secretary Krebs into a four-way 2018 GOP primary, and she eats Mickelson’s Sioux Falls lunch and Noem’s faux-cowgirl lunch while demolishing Jackley on charisma. Krebs 44%, Mickelson 21%, Jackley 19%, and Noem 16%.

17 Comments

  1. Darin Larson 2016-06-28 10:19

    She is going to run for Congress, not for Governor.

  2. Rorschach 2016-06-28 10:21

    You drew the wrong thesis from Pat’s post. He’s not expressing concern about the SOS engaging in political activity from that office. He’s saying if she wants to run for governor in 2018 she better start putting together a team and get to it because Jackley and Mickelson already have teams together and are out there working.

    Krebs is doing good work in the SOS office and saying things about government that everybody already knows but GOP partisans would rather not have said in public. Krebs would make a formidable candidate for governor. Mickelson is low energy. Jackley is just lacking something that I can’t exactly put my finger on.

    If Noem jumps into the governor race I expect Krebs to run for congress. If Noem runs for re-election Shantel would find herself in a dog fight with the Jackley and Mickelson because Jackley will have an advantage west river, and low-energy Mickelson has that dynasty thing going for him. Too many GOP party voters are wired screwy for me to predict how that three-way race would turn out.

  3. straightouttaridge 2016-06-28 10:47

    Does anybody have a picture of Pat Powers?
    Based upon accounts inside and outside the Red party, I have this image of a Napoleanisque looking character.

  4. Dicta 2016-06-28 10:51

    “Besides, Krebs likely wants to jump to higher office so she doesn’t have face the juggernaut of the Heidelberger for Secretary of State campaign.”

    Damn it, I lol’d

  5. John Kennedy Claussen, Sr. 2016-06-28 12:49

    I definitely laud Secretary Krebs recent comments about zero-based budgeting. Had we grasped that approach in the past year, I am confidant there would have been no need to increase the sale taxes in this state (upon the working poor especially), in order to increase teacher pay.

  6. mose11 2016-06-28 15:36

    Lets make South Dakota great again and elect Angela Kennecke she will get rid of all the kroinism in The State, .

  7. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-06-28 17:41

    Straight—Napoleon? Interesting… click for that photo, if you can bear it…

    http://realestatebrookings.com/about-us/

    Mose, elect Angela? Come on now, we don’t want to encourage investigative journalists to run for office….

  8. drey samuelson 2016-06-29 07:54

    Speculation on the Governor’s race (or any partisan race) should be run thru the prism of passage of Amendment V. An open, top-two nonpartisan primary that allows South Dakota voters to vote for everyone, regardless of political party, will be a real (and beneficial) change to our elections, and the results will very likely be substantially different, too.

  9. Dicta 2016-06-29 08:22

    Drey: I know you have already lead a pretty storied career out in DC, so a pitch from a guy like me will likely just go ignored, but hear me out. You remember Dwight Schrute, the character from the Office? He had a beet farm, right? When I saw your name, I had an epiphany. You need to establish a relationship with one of these types of farms and make a product line called Beets by Drey. Call me crazy, but the name just kinda works.

  10. drey samuelson 2016-06-29 08:52

    Dicta–haha, reading that started my day with a smile!

    Actually, to avoid being called “Drew” several times a day, I’ll tell folks that my name is “Drey, like ‘Dr. Dre,’ only a lot poorer,” which usually gets a laugh, but also (usually) makes my actual name stick with them, as opposed to the dreaded “Drew!”

    I don’t know who you are, but if you wanna send me an email directly, I’m at: DreySamuelson3@gmail.com

    “Beets by Drey”–damn, I should trademark that! ;-)

  11. Good Sense 2016-06-29 14:08

    drey,

    What benefits are you thinking about?

  12. drey samuelson 2016-06-29 16:44

    Good Sense–to name a few:

    1. Allowing voters–including Independents–to vote for whomever they choose (in all too many legislative races in SD the election is over after the primary).
    2. Turning the SD Legislature into a nonpartisan body (like exists in Nebraska, which has had it in place since 1936), where legislators can rise to committee chairmen regardless of the strength of their political party.
    3. Removing the ability of political parties to punish legislators for not voting the “party line,” as no mechanism to do so will exist.
    4. Instituting much more effective checks and balances.

  13. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-06-30 07:55

    Drey, that’s a good reminder: we may be conducting the 2018 election under very different circumstances. Imagine a battle royale among Krebs, Noem, Herseth-Sandlin, and the fellas. I’m not sure who eats whose lunch and comes out on top in that one! Could that be a situation where Democrats would do well to caucus well before January 1 and settle on one candidate to endorse to avoid splitting their vote and letting to of the Republicans come out as the top two vote-getters who advance to the general?

  14. Dicta 2016-06-30 08:34

    “Removing the ability of political parties to punish legislators for not voting the “party line,” as no mechanism to do so will exist.”

    I’m going to push back on this. The Tea Party has made a point of funding candidates to attack what they call RINOs on a semi-regular basis. Even if Amendment 5 passed as you propose, I am unclear as to how a well funded “vengeance” candidate couldn’t be used to persuade policy long term by keeping people in line.

  15. drey samuelson 2016-06-30 10:31

    Cory–exactly right. All you need to do in the top two system is to finish first or second, which one doesn’t really matter that much (altho I assume first is better psychologically, but plenty of second place finishers win the general election, in my observation).

  16. drey samuelson 2016-06-30 10:50

    Dicta–Glad for the push back. You’re right, political parties (or even quasi-“parties,” like the Tea Party) can still punish legislators for not voting the party agenda by running other candidates against them, withholding contributions, etc., but what Amendment V (pronounced “vee,” fyi) will do is prevent a majority or minority leader from directly punishing a legislator for their votes. In fact, if V passes there won’t be majority or minority leaders (V doesn’t prohibit their existence, but I defy anyone to show me an example where folks who were elected on a nonpartisan basis chose to organize themselves on a partisan basis once they took office), so there would be no one to punish them. It’s not unusual for legislators in partisan legislatures to be kicked out of their caucuses (ala Lee Schoenbeck), to lose committee assignments (ala Jean Hunhoff), or to have the locks changed to their office or lose perks like parking spots. These threats are real, are used to keep legislators in line, and will disappear if V passes. V won’t, however, stop parties–or groups of citizens, like the Tea Party–from doing what they can to defeat legislators they don’t like, nor could it–that’s democracy. But eliminating direct threats to legislators’ power to do the jobs they were elected to do–losing caucus privileges, committee assignments, etc.–is what V WILL do (in part), and is a real step forward, in my view.

  17. Dicta 2016-06-30 11:01

    I’ll have to read the proposed amendment, as I’m a little confused at the moment. I thought Amendment V (sorry about that) was about non-partisan elections, but now it seems it is also about eliminating a caucus as well? And if it doesn’t, as you say above, I am not sure how a person’s platform doesn’t clearly identify their leanings to other members and cause them to join a caucus anyway for the purposes of combining influence. That’s kinda standard human behavior.

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