Johnson Blasts Rhoden’s Surrender to Decline in Education and Economy, Promises to Try Harder

Congressman Dusty Johnson shows why he will win the Republican gubernatorial primary with this blistering critique of Governor Larry Rhoden’s budget and particularly Rhoden’s neglect of K-12 education:

Should he become governor, Johnson says he will propose policies which don’t hurt education when economic troubles arise.

“I don’t think any of us should be happy with what we heard in the last budget address,” said Johnson. “It just seems like we’re shrugging our shoulders and accepting a shrinking economy and declining student achievement as inevitable. Those things are not inevitable, and in fact as governor, I will turn them around.”

As far as where the funding will come from, Johnson’s office sent us this statement: “Unlike most states, our economy is not growing. South Dakota deserves a bolder vision that grows our economy, which in turn allows for greater investment in K-12 education. Education will get the first and the last dollar in the state budget as part of a Johnson administration appropriations process” [Sydney Hoier, “Johnson’s Plan to Prioritize K-12 Schools in Budget,” KELO-TV, 2025.12.16].

The power of Johnson’s critique is not just the rah-rah-ism for public schools, which many of his Republican friends are eager to wreck and replace with their fundie madrassas. Johnson packs a bigger punch with the broader critique of Rhoden’s visionless passivity. Rhoden’s never been a big-ideas guy. His biggest achievement in his brief tenure in the big chair—passing the prison that Kristi couldn’t—consisted in relocating and scaling back an existing plan, not coming up with a grand innovation of his own. Rhoden’s budget address emphasizes his plodding unoriginality.

Dusty Johnson, by contrast, offers dynamic optimism and confidence that he can come up with policies that will reverse our declining fortunes. That contrast can cross over to any issue Dusty wants to debate with Larry and pushes his primary primary opponent into a corner where Larry shrugs and aw-shuckses and says, Well, we can only do so much, and Dusty replies, No, we can do more, and we can do better. That’s a good debate dynamic for any candidate to adopt.