Senator Arch Beal (R-12/Sioux Falls) was too sick to attend a single day of Session this year, but he apparently feels well enough to run for reëlection. According to the Secretary of State’s primary candidate list, Beal filed a nominating petition Friday to run for a third term in the Senate. No word on whether Beal has been healthy enough to do any CEOing at his beer distributing company.
Beal faces one Republican primary challenger, former State Board of Pharmacy exec Kari Shanard-Koenders, who filed her petition on Thursday. Shanard-Koenders was elected treasurer of the South Dakota Federation of Republican Women in 2024.
No Democrats have filed for the District 12 seat yet… but I have to ask, why would Democrats not field a candidate for what has been an open seat? Democrats have fielded a Senate candidate, Aaron Matson, in District 11, where the margin of registered Republican voters over registered Democrats is almost the same as the margin in District 12. The Republican incumbent in District 11 is Senate President Pro Tempore Chris Karr. If Democrats think they can compete against the District 11 Republican who participated quite actively in the 2026 Session, they should think they can compete even better against a Session-long no-show.
Not that Beal does much when he is present in Pierre. In 2025, he introduced no new legislation and co-sponsored only one bill. In 2024, he introduced one bill. In 2023, he introduced no bills. Arguably, Beal made less impact in three years of occupying his seat in the Senate than he did this year, when his absence left the Senate with an even number of members and prompted the great debate over the Lieutenant Governor’s role as Senate President and tie-breaker.
While voters may feel sympathy for any individual who is recovering from a stroke, Beal did District 12 a hard disservice this year. He skipped the entire Session (might he show up today in Pierre for Veto Day?) with no direct public notice on the reasons for his absence. He left District 12 without a voice for the entire latter half of this two-year term.
The responsible thing for Beal to do would have been to resign from the Senate, allow the Governor to appoint a replacement to represent District 12 through this Session, and then, if he felt sufficiently recovered, as Friday’s petition indicates is the case, run to reclaim the seat.
It is possible that Beal’s condition so incapacitated him that he couldn’t even authorize a resignation letter. But at that point, the seat is effectively vacant. To paraphrase Rep. Tina Mulally’s beer koozies, don’t be nice; be Senators: declare that the member from District 12 cannot perform the duties for which he was elected, declare his seat vacant, and open the door for the Governor to name a replacement to represent the voters of District 12 for the remainder of the vacated term.
But the Senate could not bring itself to take that action. It thus falls to the voters of District 12 to decide not only if Arch Beal has recovered sufficiently to do the important work of speaking for them in the Capitol, but also whether Beal did all that much work on their behalf when he was able to attend previous Sessions.