In a substantial conversation with Meghan O’Brien on South Dakota Searchlight‘s post-primary podcast, veteran reporter Kevin Woster says Governor Larry Rhoden is “a very slight favorite” in the Republican runoff against Toby Doeden, “but boy,” says the ever Socratic Woster, “I wonder if I know anything about politics anymore.”
Knowledge doesn’t count for much in Trump-world, but Woster’s knowledge suggests that Rhoden may hold an advantage because shifting from a four-man race to a two-man race will put more gas in his fundraising tank:
Woster: …I would be inclined to say that Rhoden, who I assume is going to be surprised how much money he can raise now compared to the difficulties he had raising it before. I want to say that I think he’s a favorite going in that, a very slight favorite, but boy, sometimes I wonder if I know anything about politics anymore.
O’Brien: He did say when I, when I spoke with him after at his watch party, he’d said that they’re getting a lot more funding, a lot more, financial support from folks, kind of as they’ve gone to the end of this and as they’re going forward now with the runoff.
Woster: Sure, yeah, they could, they go from 4 to 2 and people who feel strongly one way or the other, you know, now they’ve got more people willing to open their checkbooks, provided they didn’t…people still use checkbooks, right? Not just old guys like me?
O’Brien: They do. I’m sure people can at least imagine them in their head [Kevin Woster, in conversation with Meghan O’Brien, South Dakota Searchlight, podcast transcript, 2026.06.05].
And with more cash, Rhoden can do more of what no one really did during the primary: throw punches at Doeden:
Woster: Well, you know, one of the things I wondered with the primary was why nobody was hitting Doeden. It seemed like he just kind of skated through hitting everybody else and nobody hit back to speak up. There was a little bit near the end, some text messages that I saw and some social media stuff questioning some of the federal money he had taken for his businesses and how that was handled. But I just, I mean, especially if it’s as tight as it certainly could be, it’s going to be hard cause, you know, he’s going to hit Rhoden. So it’s going to be hard for me that somebody doesn’t have something or won’t find something stronger than we saw against Doeden in the primary in this runoff, and that he’s going to, he’s going to get hit harder and more often [Woster, in O’Brien, 2026.06.05].
Maybe, like me, Rhoden and the other Republican gubernatorial candidates completely underestimated Doeden and thus focused their fire on the more likely challengers. But now properly schooled in Doeden’s potency and able to consolidate the fundraising impulses of his party, Rhoden can really wage war against the one Republican standing between him and keeping his job.