Governor Larry Rhoden has been minding the store and sweeping up the messes Corey Lewandowski’s next-door neighbor and front woman left for just over six months, and he has already gotten to appoint four legislators to spots abandoned by folks the people picked. Two of those vacancies were Rhoden’s fault: immediately upon his ascent to the Governor’s chair, Rhoden (wisely) picked District 13 Representative Tony Venhuizen (R-Sioux Falls) to be his lieutenant governor, and then in April he appointed District 22 Senator David Wheeler (R-Huron) to judge in the Third Circuit.
To the four Legislative vacancies that have arisen this year, Rhoden has appointed four white dudes, each representing a different influence wing of South Dakota’s crony-capitalist economy:
- Replacing Venhuizen in District 13 House: Jack Kolbeck, veteran legislator and booze lobbyist.
- Replacing Wheeler in District 22 Senate: Brandon Wipf, soybean lobbyist whose industry would flounder without federal farm subsidies (which Congress and Trump are increasing by $62 billion while cutting food assistance programs by $186 billion).
- Replacing Herman Otten in District 6 House: Tim Czmoski, a genuine Big Cheese whose industry depends on factory dairies that in turn depend on (don’t remind Secretary Noem) immigrant labor, lax environmental regulation and lavish state subsidies (and don’t forget the old days when we raised money for dairies by selling green cards). Plus, Czmoski works in the pit of CAFO-crony-capitalism known as A1 Development Solutions, where old pols and Kristi Noem’s son-in-law go to capitalize on their connections and turn more of South Dakota into dairy sewage ponds.
- And now, replacing Chris Reder in District 1 House: Nick Fosness, a Britton bigwig in the hospital lobby:
Fosness is chief executive officer for Avera’s Marshall County Hospital Healthcare Center and is the incoming president for the South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations. He served nine years on the Britton-Hecla school board.
…The choice of Fosness was praised by Tim Rave, who served 13 years as a legislator and now is executive director for SDAHO, as well as serving as president for the state Board of Regents that oversees the state’s public universities.
“I have known Nick for many years and he is a no-nonsense person who seeks to find solutions to problems. He never seeks attention — he just wants to get things done. I can’t think of anyone who is more qualified and deserving,” Rave said [Bob Mercer, “Fosness Tapped for Latest Open Seat in S.D. House,” KELO-TV, 2025.08.05].
Everyone I know from Britton is really cool, and South Dakota’s medical-industrial complex has been known to use its power for good, like putting Medicaid expansion to a public vote in 2022 so South Dakota could enjoy at least a couple good years of additional medical insurance and federal stimulus before Trump came back to wreck everything.
But Fosness’s appointment to the House emphasizes Governor Rhoden’s commitment to maintaining a status quo mainstream Chamber of Commerce conservatives—not wingnuts, just the mostly pragmatic downtown types who cheer capitalism at Kiwanis and campaign stops then gladly accept every government favor they can get to prop up their business models and South Dakota’s economy.
p.s.: My quick scan of the LRC’s historical listing of legislators shows (I welcome corrections!) ten appointments by Noem (Castleberry, Crabtree, Duhamel, Hammock, Milstead, Overweg, Schneider, Schoenfish, Walsh, Wangsness) during her six years in office. At his current rate of appointments, Rhoden could fill that many vacancies by the end of next April.