Bob Mercer offers a detailed rundown of SDPB’s 40-minute interviews with Republican gubernatorial runoff candidates Governor. Larry Rhoden and Aberdeen loudmouth Toby Doeden. Mercer is definitely more detailed than Doeden, about whom Mercer says, “didn’t explain… didn’t provide specifics… didn’t say how that could be done.”
Among Doeden’s unsupported claims is his wild promise to boost teacher salaries by $11,000:
On teacher salaries, Doeden said, “I’m taking our teachers from 47th in the country to the top half in my first four years.” He didn’t say how that could be done.
According to the National Education Association, the average teacher salary in South Dakota was $58,486 in the 2024-25 school year. That ranked 46th. The same report showed New Hampshire ranked 25th at $69,432. State Department of Education data showed 10,049 certified K-12 instructors in South Dakota schools in 2024-25. Giving each of those 10,000-plus men and women a $10,000 raise to get into the top half of the NEA rankings would cost South Dakota taxpayers an ongoing additional $100 million, and keeping South Dakota in the top half would mean spending millions of dollars more in taxpayer revenue to keep pace as other states raise their teachers’ salaries [Bob Mercer, “Doeden, Rhoden ‘Square Off’ in Pre-Taped SDPB Interviews,” KELO-TV, 2026.07.17].
I would suggest that Doeden’s disastrous showing in the latest Emerson College poll has triggered poor Toby into forgetting which party’s nomination he’s seeking—seriously, you think South Dakota Republicans are going to rally behind a nearly 20% raise for public school teachers? But Mercer notes that SDPB taped this interview back in June, before Emerson College showed Doeden building almost zero support from his surprise 30.6% primary win. So Doeden’s offer to raise teacher salaries isn’t panic-induced; it’s just more Trumpy off-the-cuff bullshit without any acknowledgement of past efforts to raise teacher pay or any effort to think through the challenges of turning that bullshit into policy beef.
To briefly remind Doeden: in 2016, Governor Dennis Daugaard and the Legislature struggled to pass a deal to use an additional half-penny sales tax to raise teacher pay from last in the nation to a meager 39th. We never reached that goal, in part because most of that sales tax hike has now been dedicated to property tax relief. Raising $110 million to put another $11,000 in every teacher’s pocket would require something like another 0.3% sales tax. I suspect Republican voters have even less enthusiasm for raising the sales tax even further than they do for plowing more money into K-12 schools.
But hey, Toby, by all means, keep alienating your base with your unbaked policy improv.
Its simple, he’s going to sell more cars.
Clearly, after all these years, the German American majority population of South Dakota wants poor teachers, both in salary and in skills. WHAT??
What other explanation is there?
They find money for plenty of other big projects.
It’s obvs their highkey.
It seems teachers are to Mr. Doeden what farmers are to President Trump: crash the economic system that supports them (property taxes and markets respectively), then offer in-funded cash to make that pain go away.
Its really simple, you make the blue states pay to make your non functioning state work and then attack them for high taxes. Its a winning strategy.
Glad your back Cory
Owen, glad to have you back!
Your average Republican primary voter doesn’t give a rat’s butt about keeping statewide teacher salaries competitive plus they wish SDPB would just go away. Does Doeden even have a campaign advisor or is everything off-the -cuff?
Hi, Owen. Hope all is well.
You can’t solve any of these problems without reworking South Dakota’s school aid system.
The system is a property tax reduction tool, but it was built on a faulty foundation. Wisconsin, Oregon and South Dakota (and maybe other states) changed their education funding systems in the early to mid 1990s, and they were centered around the same basic idea—cap how much districts could grow their budgets through local taxation and increase state aid to education at a promised rate each year (generally the rate of inflation). Each state had a similar mechanism for districts to go beyond their cap if voters had the opportunity to vote. In South Dakota, the mechanism was the opt out, which could be referred through a petition.
Fine. Problems developed quite quickly, because the system was built on three faulty assumptions: First, that the baseline foundation of what was an adequate education was never considered. It was assumed that education existing at the time was adequate and was being adequately funded. So that baseline funding was based on a wish and a hope, not a real study of what adequate education should be. The second assumption was that educational needs would not change over time beyond the point that the promised funding increases at the inflation rate would adequately cover those needs. But the faulty initial foundation was built on schools before computerization happened. There were lots of additional expenses needed for hardware and teacher training. Some of these added expenses were covered by the state, but not all. A third assumption was that the Legislature and the Governor would actually fund the education funding formula as promised. They have an uneven record on that, so to meet the bare minimum, districts often have to go to the opt out.
Of course there was some tinkering with the system. At first the system was based on student population and per pupil funding . That changed to teacher population and funding per teacher. And there have been tweaks for small schools, etc., But these tweaks have minimal impact, the very foundation of the formula is based in a far different era of education.
I saw an interview with Doeden on SDPB with Jackie Hendry. He looked like he was ready to explode from anger, or his head was going to pop off because he had no neck and his collar was way too tight. He looked uncomfortable; thus, all bluster with no solutions.
Roeden was also interviewed and looked very confident until asked about tax reforms. He couldn’t keep his numbers straight with property tax reform, correcting himself so often I became concerned for his memory. That was the only topic that lit his fire, at least a little.
Two losers and which one will we get stuck with?
grudznick has always despised the uncouth. Ask my close personal friend Lar, who is very couth. This is why grudznick has been rhallying the Rhoden Rhangers for several years. Couth should beat Uncouth.
Or at least, couther.