I was going to write that another independent has signed up to give voters in another district a choice in November, but that would be technically incorrect.
Yes, Neal Tapio, hate-spewing one-term former legislator and 2018 last-place GOP U.S. House candidate from Watertown, is running for District 5 House. Yes, his independent filing triggers a general election contest among Tapio, incumbent Republican rookie Representative Matt Roby, and one-term former Republican Representative Byron I. Callies. Absent Tapio’s filing, those two Republicans would have advanced automatically to the 2027 House to represent a district that never had the chance to vote for them… just as Tapio advanced to his one term in the Senate in 2016 due to the absence of any general election challengers. (Tapio did win the 2016 District 5 Senate primary, beating Republican Representative Roger Solum 54% to 46%… but it occurs to me that that primary is the only election Tapio has ever won; he has never run a successful general election campaign.)
But Tapio is not an independent. As of this evening, the Secretary of State’s Voter Information Portal shows that Tapio is still a registered Republican. He can keep the R on his registration but appear on the ballot with an I next to his name because, as Secretary of State Monae Johnson notes, independent candidates don’t have to be registered as independents. Read SDCL 12-6-3.2:
No person may sign a declaration of candidacy or be nominated as a political candidate for a party unless that person is a registered voter with that party affiliation [SDCL 12-6-3.2, enacted 1998].
Independents are not a party in South Dakota (and that’s why we should not capitalize it, Monae!), so the voter registration–party affiliation requirement does not apply to Tapio or anyone else filing to run as an independent. The absence of an affiliation requirement for independent candidates also squares with SDCL 12-6-8‘s provision allowing any voter to sign an independent’s petition, regardless of party affiliation, as long as the voter hasn’t signed someone else’s petition for the same office (or, in the case of House, two other petitions).
Tapio does a remarkable job of not invoking his usual radical right-wing tropes in his candidacy announcement today. He says he regrets knocking only on Republican doors in his 2016 House campaign and promises to connect with independents and Democrats. The faintest whiff of Trumpism he emits is an anti-vaxxer swipe at “The aggressive tactics used by large health systems during COVID—targeting legislators concerned about vaccine safety….”
But scroll back, and you find Tapio rah-rah-ing current Republicans candidates. He cheers radical right-winger Speaker Jon Hansen’s gubernatorial campaign. He endorses radical right-wingnut rookie Senator Mykayla Voita for reëlection in District 21. He does not endorse any of his fellow independents or any Democrats.
Of course, true to past anti-establishment form, Tapio does beat up on some Republicans. During the 2024 District 5 House primary, Tapio proudly posted a video of himself tearing one of Byron Callies’s campaign signs out of the ground (“No more weak politicians!” shouts Neal’s caption) and replacing it with a sign for grinning Republican challenger Josephine Garcia, who beat Callies by 21 votes for second place in the primary and placed second behind Roby in the general, well ahead of the two Democratic challengers. This year, Tapio has called brownshirt indoctrinators Turning Point USA “turncoats” for supporting Trump’s war on Iran despite dead founder Charlie Kirk’s statement last June that it’s “pathologically insane” to think killing the ayatollahs and installing a new regime in Iran would make things better. Tapio has also said that eliminating property taxes—something his wingnut friends in the Black Hills are trying to do—”is a ruse to destroy home ownership by Wall Street.”
And to prove he’s still the hatemonger we know and loathe, Tapio remains really eager to beat up Chamber of Commerce Republicans as globalist grifters working with the Deep State to flood America with refugees and illegal immigrant labor.
Officially Republican Tapio is at least giving District 5 voters in Watertown a chance to weigh in on their representation come November. But Schoenbeck Republicans will have to remind their Democratic neighbors to turn out in force to send relatively moderate and sane Roby and Callies to Pierre and prevent Tapio from hoodwinking the electorate into thinking he’s anything other than a MAGA/MAHA wingnut who will spend his time in Pierre degrading refugees, immigrants, Muslims, Lutherans, gay parents, Indians, reporters, and any other goats he can scape while failing, like he did the last time he served in Pierre, to address any real practical problems facing South Dakota.
Why bother with the dip stick. He’s one of those that gives laughter to the soul.
Their idiocy is needed. Toxic Neal Tabio.