Rick Knobe is out petitioning—not for mayor or Senate or a good solid ballot question, darn it, but to give Senator John Thune a little hell for trashing the Constitution:
We The People South Dakota have started a petition calling for Senate Majority Leader John Thune to uphold his oath to the Constitution.
The nonprofit organization claims Thune has failed to uphold his oath by supporting President Donald Trump’s recent actions, which have been deemed by some– including the National Constitution Center and US appeals court– as unconstitutional.
…The organization is hoping to get 250,000 signatures on the petition before November 2026, when they plan to turn it over to Thune and the Secretary of the United States.
“While Thune is our senator, he’s also the leader of the most deliberative body in the world, the United States Senate, and so every citizen in this country is impacted by what he does and what he doesn’t do,” said Rick Knobe, former Sioux Falls Mayor who now runs We The People SD [Gracie Terrall, “Group Concerned with Thune Not Upholding Constitution,” KELO-TV, 2025.09.18].
This petition, we should note, has zero legal impact. It would have more political impact if it were carried by a candidate who, starting January 1, was also collecting signatures on a nominating petition for equally Constitutional-ignorant Mike Rounds’s Senate seat. That petitioner would only need to collect 3,502 signatures (well, assume an error rate of 20%: collect 4,400) by April 28 to get on the ballot as an independent. Then that Senate petitioner could spend the election year collecting signatures and votes, using the campaign as a platform to decry the constitution-trashing gang that Thune has joined and promising to go to Washington not just to present a petition but to cast a vote to convict and remove from office the gang leaders, Donald Trump and JD Vance.