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Claussen: Register Voters, Tighten Races, GOP A-Team Will Bail

John Kennedy Claussen, Sr.
John Kennedy Claussen, Sr.

In making his case to chair the South Dakota Democratic Party at Wednesday’s forum in Aberdeen, John Kennedy Claussen offered some practical political theory. Claussen contended that the “malaise” in which our party wallows stems in part from a certain campaign flabbiness that set in when our last successful statewide Dems faced easy races. He further contended that making more elections competitive through traditional voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives will scare many Republican candidates off the ballot.

Claussen observed that George McGovern, who brought the South Dakota Democratic Party back from its last historical nadir in the 1950s, never won more than 58% of the vote in his statewide campaigns. Claussen contends that McGovern thus worked harder every election cycle to register more Democratic voters and gain every edge he could in his always close races.

Claussen then contended that the Democratic candidates who benefited from McGovern’s labors—Tom Daschle, Tim Johnson, and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin—faced weaker opponents than McGovern did and thus perhaps did work as hard as McGovern felt he had to work to expand and sustain the Democratic machine. Claussen noted that Tim Johnson won his first U.S. House race in 1986 against Dale Bell 59% to 41%. Johnson topped that margin in his next four House runs before having to win two Senate races in a row by less than two points against Larry Pressler and John Thune.

Brown County Democratic chair Jennifer Slaight-Hansen pushed back hard against Claussen’s assertion that our last statewide Democratic winners had it easy, contending that Herseth Sandlin faced tough opponents and that Johnson’s first opponent, Bell, was a political powerhouse. Claussen did not yield the point: he noted that Herseth only won after Bill Janklow removed himself from the political scene by killing a man through his reckless driving. It is perhaps worth noting that Herseth’s only victories came against Republican back-benchers; she then lost to hard-charging Kristi Noem in 2010 during the Tea Party wave.

Claussen’s claim of a post-McGovern slackness is worth investigating. From his claim he draws some interesting conclusions:

  1. To recover its McGovernite ability to win, the South Dakota Democratic Party needs to adopt his four-point plan of registering 50,000 new Democratic voters over the next five years, target key races, invest in bigger get-out-the-vote efforts, and train young Democratic activists in a party boot camp.
  2. Getting a payoff from those efforts doesn’t require winning every targeted race right away. It just requires drawing more Republicans into close races. Republicans, says Claussen, want to be anointed, not have to work to join the club in Pierre. Make Republicans sweat, and the GOP A-team will quit, leaving us with an easier, less experienced slate of Republicans to beat with our rejuvenated registration and GOTV in more targetable races.

(I hope I’m doing candidate Claussen’s thesis justice here; I invite correction from other listeners at the forum and Claussen himself.)

Claussen’s contentions may not hold up as generalizable political theory. If easy raises lead to a party malaise and dwindling voter registration, South Dakota Republicans aren’t exhibiting such symptoms. They’ve had all sorts of easy races lately, and their voter rolls are up.

I’m also not sure tough races will scare away our opponents’ A-team. Quite the contrary: the tougher we Democrats get, the less likely it may be that the Republicans will gamble on patsies and nincompoops like Jason Ravnsborg to defend their state titles. And A-teamers like Dusty Johnson will run and run hard no matter what we Democrats do.

John Kennedy Claussen offers some debatable analysis and conclusions—debatable in a good way, in that they invite us to look at history and data for evidence to inform our actions. But the actions he proposes—throw the party’s energy into a five-year voter registration drive, target key races, get back to get-out-the-vote drives, and back those efforts with a new corps of young intensely trained recruits—would surely win George McGovern’s approval.

6 Comments

  1. o 2019-03-22 09:43

    I agree with much of Claussen’s assessment – make the distinguished opposition work for their elections and stop the anointment, BUT the first step is to somehow make campaigns matter. I have seen so, so many enthusiastic Democratic campaigns that had massive get-out-the-vote pushes, and door knocking, and speaking at EVERY forum available lose to lazy GOP campaigns. How can any opposition – not just Democrat – compete when running a campaign right looses to “Name with an R?”

    I guess my question to anyone who really wants to lead the Democrat party of SD is how can we make issues and campaigns matter?

  2. ACB 2019-03-22 10:10

    I would take Claussen more seriously had he actually done any of the things he mentions in his plan during the 2018 election.

    Also, there were candidate and volunteer trainings in 2018 put on by the SDDP and other related groups.

    If the SDDP has been so hard up for so long, why is he suddenly riding in on a white horse now with the solutions? We could have used his help in 2016 and 2018 knocking doors and registering voters.

  3. John Kennedy Claussen, Sr., 2019-03-22 15:18

    ACB,

    I appreciate your constructive criticism. Win or lose tomorrow, I hope that you and I can work on a project in the future to elect Democrats In this state. My major goal, if I am not successful on the 23rd, is to start a PAC in this state to start doing the things the SDDP is not currently doing to elect Democrats, and I would be honored to have you on my team, or at least to give constructive advice to me on this PAC idea. This PAC would not work to compete with the SDDP, but to complement it, and in so doing, would help to elect Democrats throughout the state making the SDDP look better at the PAC’s expense, which is fine with me.

    As far as your mention of 2018 training programs for candidates, you are exactly right in saying that many existed. But what we need is a proactive party that targets legislative races not just a party that explains to candidates the dos and don’ts of running for office. We need a SDDP that has a paternalistic attitude towards its candidates and not one where the SDDP appears to be a store that the candidates can merely buy into.

    When you specifically make mention of my activities in 2016 and 2018, you are exactly right that I was a backbencher at best to much of that, but that is because I saw no credible and well thought out voter registration or canvassing/GOTV efforts in our state during those two cycles, and I am one who tends not to get involved in something that I think is going to fail,; because currently with our party’s voter registration efforts in this state – to the degree that there is any – I see no strategic plan, and the recent GOTV efforts have in my opinion been nothing but glorified leaflet drops where the voter is identified and encourage to vote all at the last minute.

    But I will tell you what I did do in 2018, I met with many legislative candidates in the Minnehaha County area that showed an interest in my take on the VoteBuilder assets and how to target specific voters – when a campaign has a limited budget – by evaluating those voters who can be found wedged between the weakest Democratic candidate in a given legislative district versus the weakest winning Republican candidate in that district from the prior election year, and then using that block of voters to put your main emphasis on to win. I also heard, although it maybe rumor, that the SDDP start telling other legislative candidates to use this method, too, as my idea spread. I don’t know if that rumor is true or not, but if it is true, I am honored that others found value in my idea; and this approach to politics, I might add, further speaks to my emphasis on the math over message.

    In conclusion, as far as me being a “White Knight,” well, it has been a while since I have been on a horse and I am not sure if I can ride a horse and shoot a gun at the same time, but I do believe that if my efforts fail tomorrow we will still have a good person running our party, but the future of the SDDP will not be about change then, rather it will be about the continuation of the status quo with either a pro or anti choice emphasis…. Oh, and if any one is wondering, I am pro-choice and I want to work for change in the SDDP…. And I also want to wish to everyone heading to Oacoma tomorrow to have safe travels…. See you then…

  4. Debbo 2019-03-22 16:10

    I’ve read and heard about what an organizer McGovern was. I also note that he was clearly and publicly a Liberal Democrat, supporting Liberal policies. I believe that needs to be taken into account also.

  5. Debbo 2019-03-22 16:13

    I think that Daschle’s, Johnson’s and Herseth’s drifts to the center/right played a role in the demise of the SDDP that should not be overlooked.

    There are the party mechanics, which JKC is addressing, but don’t forget the value of real Democratic policies too. Both are critical imo.

  6. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2019-03-23 05:47

    I welcome a motion from the floor to nominate ACB for chair.

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