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Radio: Heidelberger Calls for Better Teacher Pay, Voter Rights, Action Against One-Party Corruption

Adam St. Paul invited me onto the radio yesterday to talk about my run for District 3 Senate. Our 12-minute conversation is available online at Dakota Broadcasting. My main points:

  1. District 3 is great for campaigning! I can reach 95% of my voters by bicycle!
  2. Al Novstrup is “a tool of the Republican machine” whose willingness to do what the party leadership tells him produces bad legislation and bad policy that favors the rich.
  3. On teacher pay, we need to get out of the regional basement and offer teachers the full pay they deserve.
  4. Novstrup and the Republicans have “waged constant war against voters” by repealing IM 22, making it harder to vote, and eroding initiative and referendum.
  5. On corruption, Novstrup’s one-party rule is “an invitation to take money out of the till.” We thus need more balance in Pierre.

And that’s all in the first four minutes! Listen to the whole interview, and tell me what you think!

15 Comments

  1. grudznick

    If corruption exists, two party corruption is twice as bad as one party corruption.

    Mr. Novstrup, the elder, is not a blunt tool but a wielder of precision knives to cut government red tape.

    Why do 5% of your people live on hills so steep you cannot bicycle to them?

    The IM #22 was bad, it was very, very bad and was foisted on ignorant voters who didn’t understand taxpayer dollars would be paying for politicians ads. If you want that, you should initiate that all by itself and see what happens.

    Teachers already got their raises. Time to focus on another squeaky group and give them raises. Teachers had their turn and go to the back of the line.

  2. Porter Lansing

    Cory got your goat, Grudzie. You’re angry, huh? ha ha ha Great message, Cory. 👍

  3. grudznick

    Mr. Lansing, I realize you can’t tell it when two great debaters are going at it, but I just defeated Mr. H with facts once again.

  4. Debbo

    “I want to restore power to the voters.”

    Excellent comment Cory. It was a good interview. I listened to all of it. I felt like you were justifiably hard on Novstrup and the GOP, telling the truth about the evils of one party rule. Well done.

  5. Jason

    Cory,

    I didn’t listen to the audio. Just going off of your thread title.

    Are you saying there is no corruption in the Democrat party?

  6. Jason

    The voters always have the power in the States. It’s their choice to use it.

    Not so much in the Federal Government.

    That is why the Federal Government needs to be downsized.

  7. owen reitzel

    Jason-can you list the corruption in the Democratic Party?

  8. mike fom iowa

    Jason emulates Drumpf. Doesn’t read the intel, just spews garbage and hopes some lands somewhere.

  9. Grudz, your statement about “two-party corruption” is empty word play without grounding in the particulars of South Dakota politics. My contention stands: allowing one party to control all levers of government without holding them accountable at the polls fosters carelessness and corruption that does not exist when elected officials know that an effective opposition party will take their jobs away if they are caught erring.

  10. Jason, nowhere do I contend that Democrats have never engaged in corrupt activities. But again, I’m talking about the particulars of South Dakota politics. Democrats aren’t in a position to engage in public corruption because they don’t control the levers of government power. Republicans do. Having not been held accountable for 40 years, the Republicans have become complacent, allowing careless and corrupt individuals in government to act with increasing impunity. In the current situation, a wholesale replacement of Republicans with Democrats in South Dakota government would disrupt the crony networks that have shielded carelessness and corruption from exposure and correction.

    To argue, “Democrats can be corrupt, too, so I’m going to allow Republicans to continue their corruption” is foolish and immoral. The root cause of much corruption right now is Republican dominance of state government. Placing Democrats in positions of power right now—giving Sutton the gubernatorial power to root out Republican cronies and hire and appoint Democrats to positions of power; electing a majority of Democrats to one or both chambers of the Legislature—disrupts that dominance and strengthens Democrats’ position to compete in future elections. That change right now is a net plus for South Dakota. Keeping both parties competitive and encouraging the growth of effective alternative parties checks the emergence of new one-party corruption in future years.

  11. Jason

    Cory,

    The majority of South Dakotans do not agree with Democrat ideas or values.

  12. Irrelevant and false. The majority of South Dakotans want honest government, not corruption. The only route to honest government right now is to change their voting patterns and elect more Democrats in this election to punish the Republicans who have allowed corruption to fester in state government due to the complacency of one-party rule.

  13. Timoteo

    It seems reasonable to expect that a competitive, alternative political party in South Dakota would help to serve as a check and a balance against the Republican powers that be. Sometimes I wonder if that’s the Democratic party, which seems pretty severely marginalized. However, the libertarians, constitutionalists, or what have you would be even more marginalized.

  14. Timoteo, I’d accept any party or parties that could fulfill that role. SD Democrats, weak as they may be, are the only party in South Dakota with a shot at providing an effective opposition. The Libs and Cons are too small and too gripped by idealists and fringe extremists to mount effective statewide campaigns that could elect a viable opposition caucus… at least from all evidence presented so far.

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