Todd Epp of Northern Plains News fires up his new eight-category rubric to rank the four Republican gubernatorial candidates and endorse Governor Larry Rhoden in Tuesday’s primary with an 87% rating, followed closely by “credible alternative” Congressman Dusty Johnson at 80%. Loudmouth rich guy Toby Doeden ranks a far third at 52%, while Speaker of the House Jon Hansen places last at 49%
Epp puts the right two men at the top and the right two men at the bottom, but his rubrickification gets each pair upside down.
Johnson is a better choice than Rhoden. Johnson is smarter, nicer, and has more gas in his tank to lead state government. Johnson has proven his broader appeal in harder campaigns: while Rhoden plodded along through easy Legislative contests in his safe West River cowboy district and ascended to the Governorship not by dint of his own popular appeal but by Kristi Noem’s image-conscious coattails, Dusty Johnson forged his own path by winning country and city votes to unseat a more well-known and experienced Democrat from the PUC at age 27 and winning every subsequent statewide campaign that he waged. Johnson would neatly purge the last lingering clot of Noemism from Pierre, and that’s a purge from which South Dakota (and the SDGOP) would benefit.
That Noem purge also plays into looking ahead to the general election. Noem’s stock in South Dakota has tanked in a way that Trump’s hasn’t. Nominate Rhoden, and Dan Ahlers and the Dems can run a “Drain the Noem Swamp” campaign that they can’t run on Johnson. Dusty knows that’s a strong message; he’s using it himself in the primary with the “new chapter” tagline that he led with when he officially announced his campaign last June. In the general election, Johnson “new chapter” might be new enough to co-opt some of the electorate’s desire for a break from Noem(/Rhoden) without their having to vote for a whole new book from the Democrats.
Maybe general election probabilities don’t matter (and they don’t in Epp’s rubric, which considers only qualification for Governor, not electoral viability): one can reasonably argue that a boiled egg painted with an R could beat any Democratic candidate in South Dakota. But with his superior enthusiasm, grasp of policy, and breadth of appeal, Johnson can make the case for his party’s continued dominance of state government better than the older, slower, and Noem-yoked Rhoden, not to mention govern better once he wins the election.
The bottom inversion in Epp’s rankings is less problematic, because as long as egomaniac Doeden and theomaniac Hansen remain far behind and far away from running anyone else’s affairs, who cares which one pushes the other into last place? But in an awful world where we had to choose between those two menaces, Hansen would be the less awful Governor. Doeden has zero experience at any level of government. He’s just a loud salesman. Electing a loud salesman with no record of public service has proven catastrophic for the United States; it would similarly imperil South Dakota’s economy, institutions, and interstate relations. Hansen at least has some experience in building public support, crafting legislation, and navigating the complex machinery of South Dakota government. Doeden thinks he can just eliminate property taxes and let someone else figure out how to pay for whatever might be left of government; Hansen this Session at least recognized he had to compromise and pay for property tax relief to get it through the Legislature. Hansen would stink as Governor, but he’d get more done than the stinkier Doeden.