¨”It’s time for a new sheriff in town!” Aberdeen policeman and legislator Dan Kaiser boldly proclaimed in his newspaper ads. I agreed, although I didn’t see Kaiser as the right replacement. Kasier’s Republican friends disagreed.
Brown County Sheriff Mark Milbrandt won a seventh four-year-term as sheriff yesterday, handily beating Kaiser 65.82% to 34.18%. The hotly contested sheriff’s race was the marquee event for Brown County Republicans: Brown GOP turnout for the sheriff’s race was 41.6%, compared to 41.5% turnout for the governor’s primary, 40.8% for the U.S. House primary, and only 34.7% for the county auditor primary (which gun-toting Cathy McNickle won over Sara Swisher 51.95% to 48.05%).
The local Republican establishment (and remember, only my Republican neighbors got to pick our sheriff) rejected misleading, unsubstantiated wingnut accusations that Milbrandt was the Democrats’ sheriff and was coming to take our guns. Brown GOP voters ignored the hollerings of the Trumpist race-baiters who backed Kaiser due to his endorsement of their crypto-Klan rallies and anti-Muslim propaganda.
But most importantly, the local Republican establishment affirmed that the proven and repeated sexual harassment Sheriff Milbrandt harbored in his office is not a voting issue. Kaiser’s wife, former DCI agent Laura Zylstra Kaiser, won $1.5 million in damages from the state for the retaliation she suffered after complaining about that sexual harassment. Zylstra Kaiser’s lawsuit named the DCI, not the Brown County Sheriff, as the defendant, but as the trial transcript shows, Sheriff Milbrandt played a key part in pressuring the DCI to remove Zylstra Kaiser from his basement office and hurting her career in law enforcement. Zylstra Kaiser got the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to look into hiring practices at the Brown County Sheriff’s Office and find reasonable cause to believe sexual discrimination has taken place in that office.
But Brown County Republicans shrugged and re-upped a sheriff who thinks sexual harassment is just regular office horseplay. Women, you’ve been warned. If someone in the Brown County Sheriff’s office mentions your boobs, butt, or underwear, don’t complain about it.
If Kristi Noem’s use of Zylstra Kaiser’s story of sexual harassment by Brown County deputies helped her campaign against Marty Jackley, that story didn’t translate into votes for Zylstra Kaiser’s husband Dan in the Brown County sheriff’s race. Noem’s percentage in Brown County was 1.89 percentage points lower than her statewide average 56.03%. She scored lower in Brown County than in any adjoining county; only four out of East River’s 44 counties gave Noem lower percentages than Brown.
By extending Mark Milbrandt’s hold on the sheriff’s office to 28 years, Brown County Republicans made clear that the Kaisers are outsiders and they aren’t worried about reforming their local sheriff’s office to provide better justice for women. Given that her story appears to have played better with Kristi Noem’s statewide audience than with the Kaisers’ immediate neighbors, perhaps Zylstra Kaiser should go to the state convention and offer herself as a surprise nominee for Attorney General, so she could go back to Pierre and clean up the DCI that punished her to protect Milbrandt and the good old boys.
One might think the 1.5 million might forewarn the men in the office too, to think about such “horseplay” and maybe it’s not as cute as they think it is. And hopefully the sheriff will rethink how “harmless” it is, if he hasn’t by now.
How does it feel, women of Brown County, to be slapped across the face that hard?
I read things like this and I’m So Glad I Moved To Minnesota.
If SD really wants to end the brain drain and get ex-pats to return, get rid of jackasses like Milbrandt.