(Stalwarts… isn’t that what you get from sitting on the toilet too long reading posts on Truth Social?)
Aberdeen’s economic development crowd is making a big push for new representation in Pierre.
Among the four Republican candidates Bob Mercer notes in the District 3 House primary are political newcomers Timothy Hanigan and Spencer Sommers. Hanigan is a mechanical engineer with an MBA. He puts both degrees to use as owner of Prairie Tool Company in Aberdeen. In October 2024 he succeeded Mike Bockorny as CEO of the Aberdeen Development Corporation. Sommers has SDSU architecture degrees and works for CO-OP Architecture in Aberdeen. He serves on the Aberdeen Development Corporation board of directors. They face incumbent Al Novstrup, who has gotten so tired from doing nothing for 12 terms that he has to have robots write his speeches, and former legislator Kaleb Weis, whose bumbling insurrectionist culture-warriordom got him redistricted into a last-place finish in the 2022 District 3 House primary.
Katie Washnok is running again against Senator Carl Perry. Washnok challenged then-Rep. Perry’s chamber-switch in 2024 and came in a close second: Perry won 52% to 48%, beating Washnok by just 112 votes. A USD poli-sci grad, Washnok customizes motorcycles with her husband. She used to chair the Brown County GOP. She is now on the Aberdeen Development Corporation Board of Directors with Sommers and Hanigan.
Washnok’s campaign website leads with “conservative”, “Republican”, “pro-life” (no capital L!), and “Second Amendment”, and one of her many photos (and, interestingly, the photo with the lowest resolution, weakest composition, and least spotlighting of her dynamic awesomeness) shows her speaking from a dais but dwarfed behind a Trump/Pence 2020 sign (and the blurry backs of heads of scattered audience members—again, composition!). But beyond that, her homepage pitch reads more like a Chamber of Commerce brief: collaborative leadership, advocating for ag, growing a vibrant economy, and expanding educational opportunity (District 3 code for get more money for NSU!).
Hanigan and Sommers use none of Washnok’s leading GOP words on their campaign websites. Hanigan airs an obligatory hunting picture—not of himself, but of his armed son in camos and blaze-orange beanie smiling over a dead deer—under “Protect the South Dakota Way of Life”, but his other banner issues are strong communities and good jobs, supporting families and schools, and “policy over politics”. Sommers also has a hunting photo, though not of anyone recognizable, and strangely under an issue banner labeled “Focused Results”, which I deeply want to believe is a veiled promise to direct Game Fish and Parks to bring back the annual pheasant count and provide some data to justify their spending on possum-trapping. Sommers calls for taxpayer dollars to “deliver measurable returns” and decries the Legislature’s “get[ting] caught up in political distractions instead of real governance and accountability.” Alongside focused results, Sommers bullets economic vitality and attraction and retention.
Hanigan and Sommers portray themselves as practical problem-solvers focused on economic development, with no hint of the ideological whackdoodlery and Trumpism that dominate the party whose nomination to the House they seek. Washnok, too, despite her well-known Republican conservatism, leans her homepage Senate campaign messaging toward that practical bent. They all sound like dedicated representatives of the Aberdeen economic development machine of which they are integral parts.