In addition to getting his allies to holler about abortion, Governor Larry Rhoden is hollering about another great Republican campaign menace to attack Toby Doeden in the runoff: income tax!
The Rhoden campaign is taking advantage of Doeden’s sloganeering lack of detail to cast the Aberdeen loudmouth’s intent (“plan” would overstate it) to eliminate property tax as a road to a state income tax:
This ad hits multiple marks:
- It reminds voters that Governor Rhoden actually enacted property tax cuts.
- It casts Doeden’s intent to eliminate property tax completely as a budget buster.
- It tells voters Doeden endangers schools, roads, police, and fire departments, things even Republicans mostly agree we need.
- It portrays Doeden’s proposal as a self-interested grab at a half-million-dollar tax break for himself.
- It claims (with somewhat limited imagination, to be expected from Republicans and a 30-second ad) that the only way to pay for Doeden’s proposal is to increase the sales tax (which is exactly how Rhoden paid for the property tax cuts he signed this year, but shhhh! This is Rhoden’s ad!) or impose a state income tax.
- It alliterates, deeming Doeden’s proposal the “Toby Tax“.
Republicans and their allies effectively used the same main points—busting budgets, forcing an income tax—to crush Initiated Measure 28, the food tax repeal, in 2024. Now Rhoden is using the same proven recipe to cast Doeden’s tax-cutting plan as an actual tax hike.
The words “Let’s pass a state income tax” have never and will never come out of Doeden’s mouth. But until he firms up his fiscal projections with something better than magical thinking about soaking tourists, he leaves the door open for Rhoden to say Doeden is pushing us toward the income tax that 71% of South Dakotans and 81% of South Dakota Republicans oppose.