Mickelson, Mickelson, Mickelson—I’m not obsessed; the Republican Speaker of our House is just making lots of news!
Speaker Mickelson wants the Legislature to put a bunch of constitutional amendments on the ballot. However, piling a legislative pay raise, a Marsy’s Law repeal, and various restrictions to initiative and referendum onto the November 2018 ballot could confound the SDGOP’s “Vote No on Everything!” effort to undermine public faith in initiative and referendum. Mickelson has thus come up with a plan to circumvent that confusion—put the amendments he wants on a separate ballot in June!
Republican Rep. Mark Mickelson said that officials have discussed the idea because the November 2018 ballot could be “cluttered” with a slew of other initiatives….
“If we have bipartisan, well-supported proposed constitutional amendments, I think that’s an option we could consider,” Mickelson said of the primary election proposal. That date would avoid the expense of a separate election, he said [James Nord, “Lawmakers Could Put Amendments to Voters in Primary Election,” AP via McClatchy, 2017.11.14].
Politically, Mickelson’s primary amendment gambit is brilliant:
- He gets his desired amendments out of the way early, allowing the Republican Party to then pile on with “Aren’t you tired of ballot measures? Vote No on Everything!” propaganda in the fall.
- He presents his party’s scheme to the low-turnout primary electorate, which will consist mostly of Republicans turning out for the big-name gubernatorial and Congressional primaries, thus almost guaranteeing that measures bearing the GOP seal of approval will pass.
Representative Susan Wismer (D-1/Britton) smells what the Speaker is up to:
“They’re picking their voters when they decide to change an election date to their advantage,” Wismer said. “It’s just another example of what happens when you allow one party to be in such extreme control for so many years” [Nord, 2017.11.14].
Mickelson and the Republicans will do whatever they can to get whatever they want. Democrats, defenders of democracy and fairness, get ready to lobby the Legislature hard this year and demand that the Legislature play by the same rules as the rest of us… or get ready to field primary challengers against Billie Sutton and Tim Bjorkman and flood the polls in June!
I think SDs Golden Boy is wishing he would have run for governor.
Or Dems all change registration to Republican.
Just to be sure everyone understands the insidious plan here: If, say, a proposal such as the one to increase the percent required for a successful initiated constitutional amendment to 55% should be placed on the ballot by the legislature in March of 2018 (WITH an emergency clause that puts it into effect immediately after the people vote) AND per Mickelson’s proposal is then voted on during that high GOP turnout primary in June 2018, they will have successfully increased the burden on initiated proposals that are already in process for the November 2018 ballot, such as redistricting. GOP voters in the primary will change the rules of the game during the game, and once again a minority of voters will make a decision that will keep South Dakota in the dark ages for generations to come.
Yup, there will be a lot of Dems voting in that there Republican Primary. Mickelson’s bright idea might be a great idea if he wants Dems to pick their opposition.
Dang! That’s a huge point, Rep. Wismer! The enactment date change that the 2017 Legislature passed this year sets the enactment date as July 1 following completion of the official canvass. Implementing Bolin’s 55% or more threshold early is another devious way to sabotage the effort to reinstate IM22, as well as the redistricting and open primaries measures, if they make it onto the ballot.
Well, technically, Lynn and Donald, we don’t need to register Republican to participate. If the ballot includes amendments, the polling places will have separate non-partisan ballots with those measures for everyone. But that does create another level of confusion: a lot of voters may think, “Oh, it’s the primary, and only Republicans are running, so I can’t vote.” Deviousness upon deviousness!
Of course, while we’re there, maybe it wouldn’t hurt for all of us to change our registration and do a little Operation Chaos on the GOP outcome, once we see who looks the weaker candidate in each race.
Yeah, I don’t think, Susan Wismer, that would actually work. They can call anything an emergency, but if it ain’t an emergency the emergency clause doesn’t apply. These proto-Nazis may think it’s an emergency that the people are constraining their corruption, but it ain’t a constitutional emergency. You just have to be willing to call their bluff. The abuse of the emergency clause has needed a legal enema for a long time. And this ploy might just be the end of the Republican Party’s little corruption game.
Yes, Donald, the emergency clause is abused in Pierre, but it often is used to make government more efficient and responsive to the current situation as well. An emergency is whatever two-thirds of the legislature thinks it is, and the GOP has way over two-thirds of the legislative votes at the moment. So is it time to take it to court? Might be…
If we are a nation of laws, and the SD Constitution is the law of our land here, the Republican legislature should quit being hypocrites and only use the emergency clause for true emergencies. If they aren’t willing to honor the words of the SD Constitution, then they should be challenged in court. Is the SD Supreme Court going to decide that “emergency” is merely a term of convenience for the legislature? Isn’t “emergency” a term that protects the people from arbitrary decisions of the legislature? If it wasn’t an important part of the state constitution, the legislature would not have to use it so often.
Do you know what was really insidious, Ms. Wismer? The big, dark, out-of-state money used to foist lies and hoodwinkings on South Dakota taxpayers to try and take some of their money and give it to politicians to campaign. That was insidious, Ms. Wismer, and we taxpayers will no longer stand for the hoodwinking campaigns. Tell your friend Slick Rick, please.
Nope. Issue Memorandum 96-29 issued by the LRC indicates an emergency must be a real emergency, not something that two-thrids of the Legislature declares, corruptly, to be an emergency because they want to screw the public’s rights. I don’t know why people swallow the b.s. that the Legislature determines what’s an emergency. Not true, never has been, never will be. If they pull that b.s., sue ’em.
Ms. Ryan has an interesting idea. I would like to imagine young Ms. Wismer changing to registered Republican and sitting 2nd row, second set of desks from the right during the afternoons after caucusing with the Republicans in the big room. I bet she would give those fellows an earful, indeed!
Mr. Pay, the memos issued by the Council on Legislative Research holds no water and is just the opinion of somebody who is not in the judiciaries or the legislatures. You should sue, from Wisconsin, based on a 20 year old memo. Besides, doesn’t that prescribe that the sort of “emergency” for making a regulation go into effect is a valid reason? I submit it does. It is what they want it to be, memos or not.
What you got, grudz? Nothing, as usual. What does the SD Constitution say? It is rather specific. I stand with the Constitution. You and L’ll Mikey stand with corruption and lawlessness.
Grudz, a constitution that means “what they want it to be,” as you say, is no constitution at all. You were all up in arms that IM22 violated the SD Constitution, but when the legislature is doing the violating you are all in favor of it. Sad!
Mr. Larson, you and I disagree on what is violating the constitution. It’s OK, we don’t have to agree on everything or the world would be too happy a place. South Dakota is about as happy a place as most of us need, the way it is right now.
I’m going to declare an emergency, Mr. Pay, and rule you out of order. grudznick rules.
Not a lot of conservatives here, so let me share another perspective that may be overlooked. As to the pay raise, I doubt they can get a majority of GOP in legislature, and less likely at the ballot with high GOP turnout. Not a comment on merits, or the other ballot issue Susan raises, just whether pay raise will pass.
grudznick is for the pay raise. And for giving Mr. Nelson back the $8, the loss of which for his own failure to provide documentation he bemoans.
Mr. Schoenbeck, doesn’t that make it like every other time they’ve brought up giving pay raises knowing that it won’t get through the self-effacing I-won’t-support-a-raise-for-me-but-I-vote-yes-for-RepSoandSo-who-needs-it crowd, and putting it on the ballot will be like trying to repeal the nickel a mile rule. The public hates the legislatures and will stiff them.
That’s why it is worded something like “an act to remove the legislatures ability to set their own wages and limit them to a pittance.” They want to play on the voters. Who, as grudznick has told all of you, don’t read this stuff and are easily swayed by misstatements.
Donald aptly cites Issue Memorandum 96-29, which figured prominently in our discussions of the repeal of IM 22. Alas, I lacked the capital to bring a challenge to the emergency clause then. Perhaps Represent SD/US will have a few thousand dollars to engage counsel to write a brief and file a challenge to this impending fake emergency.
I wonder, though: could we mount a legal challenge to this emergency clause in time to stop the primary election? Would a legal challenge to the emergency clause also have to coincide with a referendum drive, for which there would hardly be enough time before the first early votes would be cast at the end of April?
Lee, fair point about the pay raise’s chances among a conservative primary electorate. However, I’ll contend that (1) Mickelson would be able to focus his marketing on GOP Lincoln Day dinners rather than a larger, more inclusive, more expensive advertising campaign, and (2) the GOP leadership cares much more about beating IM22 2.0 than it does about raising pay for legislators, since the current pay scale favors their interests. An entirely practical Republican can think, “Hey, if I get more money in my pocket, that’s great, but if I don’t, we stick with the status quo of conservative retirees and rich guys who vote our way.”
Jenny, on running for Governor, I’m still willing to take Mickelson at his word when he says he’s glad he’s not running for Governor and that choosing to stay out of that race has been “freeing“. Look at all the fun he’s having and all the press he’s getting. Heck, he’s doing more right now than Jackley and Noem combined, and he doesn’t have to temper what he’s saying to what focus groups or big donors want to hear.
I read an interesting book, “Corruption,” which looks at corrupt regimes all over the world, and how they got that way. There’s really a lot of ways to fall into a corrupt regime, but the erosion of ethics in society and government makes it much easier to go on the down escalator toward rampant corruption. I’d suggest South Dakota is right there in the basement.
Let’s look at the erosion of the norms surrounding the emergency clause in South Dakota as an example. The Constitution is pretty clear about what constitutes an emergency, but Legislative leaders over decades have bent the rules so that current and former legislators now think an emergency is whatever they say it is. The SD Constitution no longer counts for anything, because the leaders have become corrupt through litte increments over the years.
For a number of decades legislators have used an emergency clause in the most trivial of cases, when there is no emergency at all, but when there is little opposition to a bill. Hey, that’s not listed in the Constitution, but, what the hell, nobody will object. Apparently, they can piss all over the SD Constitution, just as long as two-thirds of both bodies are pissing on it. And that’s where South Dakota is today. Now Mark Mickelson thinks he can piss on the Constitution at will, and some current and former legislators think they have the right to piss on it, because that’s what has always happened in Pierre.
When ethics fails, which it has in South Dakota, you have the courts to go to. If the courts fail, you have a sort of authoritarian corruption that is almost impossbile to dislodge. You aren’t there yet, but it’s very, very close.
Let’s look at corruption of process in the Legislature. You would expect Mark Mickelson, coming from a long line of legislative leaders, would be highly protective of the process of the legislature and want to comport it to the Constitution. One thing that corrupt people do is use legislative power for their own purposes, not for the purposes of the people they serve.
The Legislature has immense power, but it never uses that power as a check on the executive branch or even to investigate wrongdoing in the executive branch. It fails repeatedly over and over again over decades to check and balance the executive branch. It fosters corruption through its dereliction of constitutional duty. It complains incessantly about not having the power to do its job, when, in reality, they have no intention of doing their job. They are corrupt, because they have the power and the duty to investigate and check wrongdoing in the executive branch, but they refuse to do that constitutional duty.
Then these corrupt whiners complain about largely powerless people who collect signatures for redress of greivances, a right provided to them by the US and South Dakota Constitutions. They use their power, not to check executive overreach and corruption, but to cover it up and to prevent the people from checking that overreach and corruption.
What is it about South Dakota leaders that turns them ever more toward using power against citizens’ constitutional rights, rather than doing their constitutional duties? It astounds me that you elect drek like Mickelson, and provide him with the power to take away your rights while insuring an increasingly corrupt state government?
We were able to turn around some of this corruption for a few years in the 80s and 90s. We used the initiative. Then they started slowly and methodically taking away your rights, and you let them!!!! That’s what I don’t understand. Well, you better start fighting because the crooks mean business.