I’ve never run a political party, but if I did, I suspect I could do a better job of optimizing my use of free media than rookie South Dakota Republican Party chairman Jim Eschenbaum. Struggling to raise money for his party, the mustachioed Millerite gets a chance to pitch his party on public radio but makes the headline his worry that there won’t be free food at the GOP convention:
“The biggest question with the convention committee is whether the convention attendees are going to have to pay for their own meals or not,” Eschenbaum said. “If we pay for their meals, we need about $130-150,000 to make convention happen. If we make them pay for their own meals at convention, we can do convention for about $50,000 or $60,000.”
Eschenbaum said he’d like to be able to fund those meals for people in attendance. He said he doesn’t have an exact timeline for when that funding is needed but estimated at least a month out so the host venue can prepare in advance. Eschenbaum said he believes they’ll be able to reach the necessary mark to provide meals at the state convention [Jackson Dircks, “SDGOP Donations Sluggish to Close Out Year, Could Impact 2026 Convention Meals,” SDPB Radio, 2025.12.19].
There you have Eschenbaum’s fundraising pitch: Donate now to the South Dakota Republican Party, and the first $100,000 we receive will go toward free food for several hundred party elites! Not candidate support, not call and knock lists, not vigorous postcard bombings of uppity liberal Democrats, but perks for party players.
I can hear the checkbooks snapping shut… and the mice not clicking on the SDGOP Donate button.
O.K., maybe Jackson Dircks selectively edited the interview. Maybe Eschenbaum talked about a whole bunch of other priorities on top of free chicken dinners at convention.
But why did Eschenbaum even mention convention meals in the press? Such convention details don’t interest donors and they don’t flip seats (what few seats Republicans have yet to flip in South Dakota). Tell the world you’d like to spend a hundred grand on meals for your big party party, and even if that cost estimate is realistic (687 delegates, each brings a date, cater three big meals and one box lunch, an average price of $18 per plate/box would approach six figures!), and you sound like a party chair with his priorities seriously out of whack.
Snap goes the weasel.
It’s much easier to deny human rights on a full stomach. Look at their leader. He’s gettin’ kinda’ blubbery. I just read that all mention of Native American history has been removed from learning centers within National Parks. Pres is still holding a grudge because an upstate NY tribe denied him a casino license. The NFL denied his proposed purchase of a team. I suppose they’ll get theirs, too.
Bad time to be brown in Washington town …
Things really are getting tough for the party of the elite these days. After they get done lecturing the rest of us that that there should be no free lunch for poor kids, the elite-meat-to-eat folks finally have to pay for their own lunch. My, my. They couldn’t find some out-of-sate billionaires eyeing data center sacriifice areas to pay for their meals? What in the world is happening?
grudznick has no qualms about paying well for a hearty gravy-laden breakfast, or lunch for that matter. Thea insaner fellows in Miller who want to hold their next party here in the City of Rapid need to raise their own damn lunch money. Plus they are making big bank on that gun raffle. BUWAHAhahahaha
Donald Pay your opinions would be more credible if they were based on facts
Nobody has suggested eliminating the free or low cost school meals provided to the children whose families qualify. Nor is anybody suggesting that the food stamp program, WIC, TANF or any other program be eliminated.
The issue is about who should pay for the school lunches when the parents are perfectly capable of paying? Lunch money is a form of child support..
The people complaining about having to pay for their kids’ meals don’t want to pay child support. It’s that simple.
As for your notion that the elites who attend conventions will “finally” have to pay for their meals, in the past they always did pay. The meals were fundraisers, the delegates paid around $50 for every meal they opted for, and every meal included a headline speaker..You paid to have breakfast with a Congressman, Lunch with a US Senator, Dinner with the Governor. Three days of a state convention cost a minimum of $500 to attend everything; transportation and lodging are not included in that.
The problem with the SD Republican party is that too many of the people currently on the state central committee were recruited a few years ago by operatives who neglected to tell them they would be spending their own money to perform the duties of their offices.. It has become obvious that the current SDGOP chairman has no idea what he is doing.
I posed a question to my technical A.I. assistant.
Do parents in South Dakota requesting free school meals for their kids have to qualify monetarily?
He answered thus …
Yes — South Dakota parents must meet income‑based qualifications to receive free or reduced‑price school meals for their children.
Here’s the clear breakdown, grounded in the search results:
🍽️ How Eligibility Works in South Dakota
South Dakota participates in the federal National School Lunch Program, so eligibility is determined by household income relative to USDA guidelines.
✅ Free meals
A child qualifies if the family’s income is at or below the USDA free‑meal threshold.
Example from SDPB:
A family of four qualifies for free lunches if income is at or below $39,000 per year.
✅ Reduced‑price meals
Families with income slightly above the free‑meal threshold may qualify for reduced‑price meals.
Example:
A family of four qualifies for reduced‑price lunches if income is at or below $55,500 per year.
📄 Application required
Families must submit an application with income information; schools keep the policy on file and review eligibility.
🧾 Bottom line
Yes — parents must qualify based on income.
South Dakota does not offer universal free school meals; only families meeting federal income guidelines receive free or reduced‑price meals.
yes, free or reduced-cost meals are provided to children from low -income households.
The parents who are complaining that the meals are not free are the ones who are perfectly capable of paying for the meals.
Since about half the children live with only one parent, I have suggested that unpaid lunch bills be sent to the office of child support enforcement. That office is already processing the child support payments paid by the non-custodial parents, and the cost of the lunches can be deducted from the support before the payment is forwarded to the custodial parent.
Non-custodial parents should have no complaint about this as their money is supposed to be used to feed their children.
The other 50% of the kids can also have their unpaid lunch bills sent to the office of child support enforcement. There are penalties for not paying your child support, and treating school lunch money as the child support it is should be a good wake up call for the deadbeats who aren’t paying.
perhaps Mr Pay is confusing the state convention with the national convention.
I went to only one of those, in 2016, in Cleveland.
The hotel did not have free breakfast. It was $10 something. We were in the same hotel with the North Dakota delegation which had decided to have fundraising breakfasts with speakers. We were invited to join them, for $50 a pop, They had John Bolton one day and Phyllis Schafly another. I didn’t go. The room was $275 a night and it was blowing my budget.
The first evening we were there, we were told we would have supper at the Rock n Roll hall of fame . sure. It was a bunch of food booths, local restaurants passing out those tiny souffle cups with half a cracker and a dab of pate. And a business card for their restaurant. It was like grazing the samples at Sam’s Club. We joined other hungry delegates walking into town where we had to wait 45 minutes for a table, so many people looking for real meals.
At the convention center itself, the menu had three items: a hot dog & bun, a tray of nachos & cheese, and bottled water. That was it. As I recall, the two food items were $6 each and the bottle of water was $5.
That was the evening repast, unless we went toward the stadium, where a few people had set up a grill for hamburgers, which cost a few bucks, I don’t remember. We had to stand in line for a long time to get hamburgers and then find a block of granite or cement to sit on.
We were told we would have lunch one day, courtesy of AT&T.
That lunch consisted of oatmeal cookies and caprese-kebabs… and no place to sit down.
There was one lunch of real food included in the whole trip. Just one. Had to sit on the edge of a dance floor to eat it, but at least it was edible.
The hotel we stayed at kept their restaurant open for us late at night, we would get back to the hotel around 10:30-11:00 pm where we could finally get a real meal, served at a real table, with chairs to sit in, which we paid for ourselves.
Any notions you entertain about Republicans go to conventions to enjoy free meals are wrong. It is amusing to me that the new chairman of the SDGOP thinks convention meals should be free.
Algebra, the 2016 convention sounds like a typical Trump affair, cheap, poorly organized, and not interested in serving the people who make Trump’s power possible.
I was told later that it was the state party’s responsibility to get the delegation plugged into parties and receptions. It doesn’t have anything to do with who the presidential nominee is. Supposedly, there are corporate sponsors who will feed a state’s delegation lunch if their lobbyists can have a face to face meeting with some members of Congress or a Governor, and those are the people who usually organize those things.
Going to a national convention was a bucket list item for me and I have no interest in attending another. We could have flown to London for what it cost us to spend three days in Cleveland.
As for your “typical Trump affair” GET OVER IT. Nicolas
Maduro is in custody, charged with narco terrorism etc, and Reza Pahlavi is ready to topple the Iranian regime, thanks to Trump.
you are on the wrong side of history here.