I was going to give Democratic Secretary of State candidate Terrence Davis some minor guff for the strange spammy link at the top of his campaign website:
I am running for Secretary of State to ensure that every South Dakotan’s voice is heard, and our democracy is upheld with integrity, fairness, and transparency for all. The Office of the Secretary of State plays a critical role in safeguarding the democratic rights of South Dakotans, ensuring that every citizen can freely express their vision for the future. This expression of democracy is only possible through transparent, ethical, and honest administration of voting rights and electoral processes—values I hold dear. In recent years, the concept of transparency has been reinforced in other sectors as well, with platforms such as https://au.trustpilot.com offering public reviews for regulated online services [Terrence Davis, campaign website, retrieved 2026.09.19].
The first three sentences are tolerable if somewhat pallid boilerplate for a man running to save South Dakota’s elections from being run by a right-wing conspiracy nut. But the fourth sentence flies off on a tangent and includes a link to private Dutch company Trustpilot. The actual address of the hyperlink is “https://au.trustpilot.com/review/top-10-online-casino-australia.eu.com”, which when clicked on opens a new window, in which we learn Trustpilot has removed the profile associated with that link, suggesting that it was one of the fake reviews that have plagued Trustpilot. I can’t imagine why Davis would put that largely irrelevant sentence and that bogus link at the top of his website. I’m inclined to believe Davis either asked AI to generate his content or that his site was somehow hacked by an online casino spammer promoting its own fake reviews.
Whatever the source, Davis isn’t doing a great job of proofing his campaign website.
But I’m probably the only person who’s going to notice or care about Davis’s sloppy webbery. The current Secretary of State, Republican Monae Johnson, certainly hasn’t been very good at details, yet she has just taken over the weekend political news cycle by endorsing Davis:
I am deeply grateful to have the support of South Dakota Secretary of State Monae Johnson.
Monae and I come from different political parties. We will not agree on every issue. That is exactly why her confidence in me means so much.
She has spent more than a decade working inside the Secretary of State’s Office and understands the responsibility of this job in a way very few people do. Today, she explained in her own words why she believes I should succeed her.
Monae wrote:
“South Dakota deserves a Secretary of State who will strengthen confidence through performance rather than provocation; who will support election officials rather than burden them for political effect; who will protect voter access and election security without pretending those goals are enemies; and who will treat the office’s employees, voters, candidates, and business owners with dignity.”
I’m grateful for her trust, and I intend to earn it.
This campaign has never been about asking South Dakotans to abandon their values or their party. It’s about whether we can expect competence, fairness, accountability and service from the people entrusted with our elections and public institutions.
Those principles belong to all of us [Terrence Davis, campaign FB, 2026.09.19].
Funny: the link indicated in Davis’s graphic doesn’t work, either, but later in the FB comments, Davis posts a functional link to Johnson’s personal statement on Google Drive:
That’s no fake review; that’s a real statement from Monae Johnson, telling her fellow Republicans and voters of all other stripes to elect a Democrat to succeed her rather than her party’s own nominee, the dubious Heather Baxter. The SDGOP spin blog has posted Johnson’s endorsement of Davis as well, without commentary.
Monae Johnson thus completes her turn away from the right-wingnuts who brought her to the party. In 2022, she rode election-denialism to her first election victory over a far more qualified and honest Democratic candidate. After stacking her office with fellow anti-democracy nuts, the incompetent Johnson broke with the election-deniers, who felt Johnson wasn’t working hard enough to ruin elections and cast their lot with Baxter.
At the beginning of the week, Johnson shook up both her former wingnut allies and perhaps some GOP mainstreamers by joining an amicus curiae brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block Donald Trump’s plan to use the Postal Service to steal mail-in ballots and then subtly swiping at Attorney General and Republican U.S. House candidate Marty Jackley for supporting that plan without seeking any information from her office about the practical implications of that federal ballot interference. Now Johnson has directly breached Republican decorum by endorsing a Democratic candidate.
But Johnson’s declaration for Davis may not trigger a round of condemnation from her fellow Republicans. Given Baxter’s lack of political capital outside her small cabal of election-denying moonbats, Johnson’s announcement may open the door for other prominent Republicans to cast Baxter aside and endorse Democrat Davis for Secretary of State.
And hey, Terrence: now that you’re going to get a surge of attention, you really ought to clean the casino-spam off your website.