Democratic candidate for Public Utilities Commission Frank Kloucek is competing remarkably well with Republican/Americans for Prosperity candidate Don Haggar. Adding supplemental reports to pre-general campaign finance reports, as of this weekend, Kloucek reports raising $39,981.57 plus $1,250 in donated goods or services. On supp and pre-general, Haggar reports raising $43,750.
Any South Dakota Democrat who can raise 94.2% of what his Republican opponent can is amazing. The only statewide Democratic candidate currently outraising her Republican opponent is School and Public Lands candidate Dr. Raeann Mettler, who in her first time running for statewide office has raised $11,478.77. That relatively paltry sum puts her in the bottom half of Democratic statewide candidates, but it’s still 24% more than lazy incumbent Commissioner Brock Greenfield has raised to protect his sleepy sinecure.
Against Republicans who are trying, no Democrat is doing as well statewide as Kloucek is against Haggar:
Comparing Dan Ahlers’s pre-general haul to Governor Larry Rhoden’s is perhaps unfair, since Rhoden had to burn a lot of the $2.7 million he raised after the primary to beat down Aberdeen loudmouth millionaire Toby Doeden in the July runoff. But by raising almost the same amount of cash as Don Haggar can from all of the corporate crony friends Haggar made while serving in the Legislature and working for Americans for Prosperity, Frank Kloucek is demonstrating the same kind of hustle that helped him win eleven Legislative elections in not particularly liberal country.
One cross-partisan surprise comes in Kloucek’s October 21 supplemental filing, in which he reports $500 in donated goods or services from Steve Sibson of Mitchell. Long-time readers will recall Sibby, the radical lone-wolf conservative who 22 years ago deployed his erstwhile blog Sibby Online to serve the John Thune-backed astroturf-blogstorm that cut the balls off the Sioux Falls Argus Leader‘s political coverage and helped Thune kick Tom Daschle out of the Senate. Steve Sibson, who saw Marxism, Nazism, and Satanism in almost everything Democrats did, now puts putting $500 of his own sweat in service of an unapologetic Democrat. I am glad to see Sibby taking a breather and fighting some real devils for once.
The Secretary of State hasn’t posted Kloucek’s complete filing, but it appears that every penny Kloucek has raised for his PUC bid has come from South Dakota donors. Haggar is mostly in-state-funded as well, but he does show $1,500 in individual donations from beyond our borders (at least $500 of that is from in-laws in Kansas, so no big whoop) and $2,500 (now we’re headed for a whoop) from one out-of-state Beltway political action committee, the Regulators Roundtable PAC, which declares its purpose to be “exclusively focused on electing and defending conservative Public Service Commissioners” and then in the next electronic breath hilariously describes itself as “monitoring all 10 states that elect PSCs for outside ideological interference“.
The Regulators Roundtable Institute doesn’t want any outside ideological interference… except when they come with their outside PAC money to interfere on behalf of guys like Don Haggar who share their corporate-conservative ideology and want to prevent South Dakota’s regulators from regulating.
Frank Kloucek’s only ideology is his commitment to serving the people of South Dakota. South Dakotans interested in protecting their utilities, resources, and rights from corporate raiders like Don Haggar and his anti-regulation backers should be glad Kloucek is waging his good fight for a seat on the Public Utilities Commission. In these last few days of the campaign, South Dakotans might want to send Frank some last-minute gas money so he can get out, visit more voters, and spread the good word!
In Frank we trust! Go win this thing