Red State Family Values

More stuff on Klaudt.
http://legis.state.sd.us/sessions/2005/mbr250.htm

 

Jersey --

That's simply a fuckup. Meant to say SD hasn't voted for a Dem since FDR.

And I'm familar with the area, and I had to look up Walker, SD. That's how fucking small it is.

 

I'm honestly not trying to start shit (particularly since I'm the one begging people to stop), but I am interested to know one thing:

What exactly defines a "red state". Is it only presidential voting?

Because S.D.'s breakdown is, as best I can tell:

US Senate
1 "Red" Senator
1 "Blue" Senator

US House
1 "Blue" Representative

Look, there's two things I know about South Dakota: 1) Mount Rushmore's there. 2) The capital is Pierre. That's the extent of my S.D. knowledge. But if a state's elected representatives are 2/3 "Blue", how exactly is it defined as "Red?"

If you want to PM me so the thread doesn't get cluttered even more, though I'm not sure what else could be said about this stain on humanity, that's cool.

 

I can help, Mustard.

SD is most certainly a Republican state, but, as always, it's more complicated than that.

The state legislature is dominated by VERY right-wing Republicans. Just last session, that body passed a complete ban on abortions in the state. The vote wasn't close. The voters, however, rejected that bill pretty soundly on a referendum --56- 44.

The only thing that has kept SD's national delegation from being more dominated by Republicans are popular moderate Democrats and the infighting, tragedy and idiocy among the Republicans.

Since SD's favorite political son, Gov. George Mickelson, a moderate Republican, died in a plane crash back in the early 1990s, things have been upside down.

Maverick Bill Janklow was governor for two terms and almost ran for a third by placing his wife on the ballot. Instead, he ran for the senate. He just barely lost to current senior senator Tim Johnson. Like, by 50 votes. He then ran for the House and won, narrowly defeating DINO but wildly popular Stephanie Herseth. He'd still be there today if he hadn't killed a motorcyclist when he ran a stop sign.

Proof that it's a Republican state? South Dakotans were represented for a long time by Tom Daschle, who eventually became majority leader. While he was majority leader, the state got pork spending WAY out of wack with its tiny population. But Daschle lost to John Thune the second time around.

Thune had lost to Daschle the first time when he probably should have run for governor. As it worked out, his not running for governor opened the door for current golden boy Mike Rounds, who will likely challenge Herseth the next time out. He has a better than average shot of beating her, though she is, as I said, wildly popular. There are simply a much bigger number of registered Republicans in the state than Democrats, although the numbers are evening in the "metro" areas of Sioux Falls and Rapid City.

So the short answer to your question is, if the Republicans had some strong leadership and their candidates hadn't had some misfortunes, they'd likely have a lock on the entire delegation. It's such a small state that there are few viable candidates for national office -- check out the guy they dug up to run against Herseth the last time if you don't believe me.

 

Interesting. Thanks.

 

You got your stuff screwed up there. Janklow never ran against Johnson. Thune ran against Johnson and lost by 500 votes. He was going to run for governor before Dick Cheney and Karl Rove convinced him to run against Daschle. One of the biggest reasons Thune beat Daschle was that Thune said he could save Ellsworth AFB because he would be in the majority and would have the ear of the president -- so he won by basically promising to save pork.

 

Pope's right.