Back in June, when Toby Doeden won only 30.6% of the GOP primary vote and had to face second-place primary finisher Gov. Larry Rhoden in a runoff, Doeden called the runoff requirement “silly” and “ridiculous”. Doeden’s crushing defeat in yesterday’s runoff shows that South Dakota’s rarely used runoff rule exists for a very good reason: to prevent a widely unpopular candidate from winning a party’s nomination.
SDCL 12-6-51.1 requires that, in primaries with three or more candidates, a candidate for Governor, U.S. Senate, or U.S. House must win at least 35% of the vote to advance to the general election ballot. Had House Majority Leader Joe Barnett (R-Aberdeen) not pushed that rule into law in 1985, Toby Doeden would have won the Republican nomination for Governor with the support of less than a third of the participating Republican electorate. Even when his support was at its maximum, on Primary Day, 69.4% of Republicans wanted someone else as their candidate for Governor. The runoff demonstrated that those 69.4% weren’t willing to shrug and say, oh well, Doeden wasn’t my first choice, but he’ll do. All of those 69.4% preferred Larry Rhoden and said so yesterday in the runoff, as did a few of those primary Doeden voters.
The primary did not clearly reflect the will of the Republican electorate. Doeden was able to take advantage of a crowded ballot and a divided electorate to turn his minority support into a brief win. But the one-on-one runoff exposed the weakness of Doeden’s support and his inability to build bridges with former opponents. The runoff thus saved the SDGOP from a weaker general election candidate and improved their chances of beating Democratic challenger Dan Ahlers in November.
In other words, the runoff worked in exactly the way a party should want it to work.
But remember: had Doeden spent just another million or two in May and pulled just a couple thousand voters away from each of his primary opponents on June 2, he could have won the nomination with a mere 35% of the primary vote. He could have achieved what numerous GOP insurgents before him—Gordon Howie, Stace Nelson, Neal Tapio, Steve Haugaard—have failed to do: translate a little bit of yokel fervor into a genuine upset of the SDGOP establishment. Doeden ultimately failed miserably, just like those past insurgents, but he needed a couple extra months in the sun to expose his weakness and rally the SDGOP faithful back to the boring mainstream.
The “silly” runoff worked in the establishment’s favor, preventing a ridiculous candidate from winning a nomination most of his party didn’t want him to have. I would humbly suggest that the Rhoden camp might want to further insulate itself from future Doedenism by strengthening the runoff requirement. Don’t let some loudmouth malcontent like Doeden come close to hijacking your party with a mere 35% of your primary vote. Amend the runoff law to require primary candidates to win 50% plus 1 to gain the nomination. Ensure that the majority of your voters always rule.