Republiucan establishment figure Nathan Sanderson, currently chief of the South Dakota Retailers Association, expresses his hope for a return to boring state government:
And so, yes, there are certainly specific bills, but I think broader, the dichotomy is a philosophy of governance, and what seems to be the case right now, and you don’t want to jump to too great a conclusion, but what seems to be the case as a result of the 2026 Republican primary is more of a return to traditional governance, as I kind of like to say, let’s make state government boring again, right? [Nathan Sanderson, interviewed by Meghan O’Brien, Searchlight Report podcast transcript, South Dakota Searchlight, 2026.06.19].
Sanderson says that loudmouth Toby Doeden’s 31% first-place finish in the four-way gubernatorial primary doesn’t actually contradict the clear return-to-mainstream sentiment expressed by GOP primary voters in Legislative races as much as we might think:
Outside of that, I mean, it also seems clear that there’s a little bit of a disconnect between the legislative outcome and the gubernatorial primary outcome, meaning most of the folks who won in the Legislature probably aren’t going to be aligned with, say, a Toby Doeden agenda. And I think that it would be very clear that should Toby Doeden eventually become governor, he would be facing a Legislature that was not particularly aligned with the rhetoric that he’s used to this point in the campaign, so that could be an interesting outcome.
I also think, though, that that apparent dichotomy is simply a product of the way that the Republican primary, or the primary elections for governor, work, meaning you had a four-way race, and it was generally pretty split. I mean, when the lowest vote getter gets 21% and the highest vote getter gets 31%, you know that’s pretty well, the votes are pretty well spread across the board, and so it will be interesting to see what happens in the primary, where Toby Doeden didn’t receive more than 50% of the Republican vote in any county. So, meaning the three sort of more, the ones with government experience versus the one guy who had no government experience, between those three, Larry Rhoden, Dusty Johnson, and Jon Hansen, they got 69% of the vote, and he got 31. And so with Toby not winning more than 50% in any one county, I don’t know that you could necessarily say, oh yeah, there’s this huge disconnect between the gubernatorial vote and the legislative vote. I think what will be interesting is the outcome of the runoff, of course, between Larry Rhoden and Toby Doeden [Sanderson, in O’Brien, 2026.06.19].
A re-mainstreamed, re-Main-Streeted Legislature under the stable, tested Executive guidance of Rhoden and Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen would certainly be more boring than a Capitol with Doeden lobbing bombs at the Legislature from the Second Floor. And Sanderson provides an interesting way to frame the possible limits of Doeden’s appeal: the outsider may have solidified the outsider vote in the June 2 primary, but he may not add much to his July 28 runoff column from the large majority of Republicans who, like Sanderson, prefer a boring mainstream candidate with a proven record in Pierre.