Senator Mary Duvall (R-24/Pierre) posts the attack card sent out by out-of-state dark-money goons and says she stands by her votes in 2016 to raise the state sales tax to raise teacher pay and reduce property taxes and in 2022 to maintain that 4.5% sales tax:
Kudos to Duvall for directly rebutting her nameless attackers and pointing out their errors. However, Duvall dissembles on her Senate Bill 117 votes. Yes, when she voted aye on the Senate version of SB 117, it was a simple little bill eliminating the requirement that the Board of Regents report annually on its efforts to promote the state’s winking mountained-molehill vision of “intellectual diversity” (and that was the right vote!). But when the House hijacked SB 117 to not just “deal with” but repeal the sales tax on food, it did not die agentlessly in conference committee. It never went to conference committee. SB 117 bounced back to the Senate for a concurrence vote, and Duvall and the Republican majority voted not to concur and not to appoint a conference committee.
I commend Senator Duvall for standing by tax votes that dark-money sloganeers portray as un-Republican but which she casts as fiscal responsibility. I recommend she not foul that firm rebuttal by underplaying her responsibility for the death of the food tax repeal.
Of course they want to get rid of Duvall. She’s sane, responsible, and effective. They can’t have that!
Governor Noem is campaigning against Liz Cheney in Wyoming, even though Cheney campaigned for Noem in SD in 2018. Yet Noem is backing the Cheney-esque mainstream Republicans in the South Dakota Legislature whom the radical right is trying to oust.
These events more convince me that EVERYONE in SD ought to be registered as Republican. The party infighting to determine who gets to represent South Dakotans (most often with no opposition after that primary) means that we have a one-party system already; we just have voters who have chosen to exclude themselves from that selection process by virtue of their voter club registration.
The consequence of allowing our GOP friends to settle this themselves is the completion of the GOP revolution by the MAGA, Christian Nationalist, theocratic, insurrectionist, demagogues. This is about the .1% using empty promises to push the weak-minded ever more into subservience; to ensure the majority never comes for the lop-sided economic spoils of the minority by assembling whatever political alliance to make that happen.
She and the Hughes County Seantor, Mortenson??, seem to try to be “good government Republicans”. While I would probably vote for their Democratic opposition depending on their positions (in Hughes County you never know where the Dems are coming from), she deserves the benefit of the doubt, just because she’s opposed by out of state wing nuts.
The Noem nonsense against Liz Chaney just shows her total lack of depth and resistance to knowledge. Her ignorance knows no bounds.
Duvall and Mortenson both fit Arlo’s description. They seem more interested in practical policy than the culture war.
Will is a good guy. He is considered and interested in actually legislating, not posturing like so many of the goons that populate Pierre currently. The amount of flak he took for the Ravnsborg stuff is a reflection of the party rot in the South Dakota GOP. Success is ruining them all.