Mel’s Musings – Why they lost….

The midterm elections are over, and the results are in. The contests for some statewide offices, like Secretary of State and State Treasurer, were battles of the unknowns – on both sides of the aisle. In that case, being a Republican is a tremendous advantage for several reasons. First, there are almost twice as many registered Republicans than registered Democrats in South Dakota. Second, folks don’t cross party lines any more like they used to. Political parties are no longer a loose coalition of nearly like-minded people but rather a fanatical cult of true believers who would rather die than vote for the other side. That’s true of both die hard Republicans and yellow dog Democrats (the saying used to be that Democrats would rather vote for a yellow dog than a Republican). When Democrats Tom Daschle and Tim Johnson were in office the party registration split wasn’t even, but it was significantly closer, and voters then were willing to consider the person instead of just looking at the party label. Of course, money, message, the candidate and the type of campaign factor in as well when considering why a person wins or loses an election.

Marijuana legalization lost for several reasons. To be fair to the recreational marijuana legalization crowd, recreational legalization never should have been on the ballot this year. Marijuana won in 2020 (both medical and recreational uses of marijuana) and then was fought tooth and nail by Governor Noem with every means at her disposal. She eventually managed to carry the day in court. That’s why her 2022 campaign pledge to “respect the will of the people” on ballot measures rang hollow to many on the pro marijuana side of the legalization debate. However, it was on the ballot this time around, and the anti-legalization crowd used their second chance to get their ducks in a row. It helped that they had truth and the experience of other states on their side. Marijuana use does cause mental health issues, especially among the young, specifically schizophrenia. In states where legalization has been around for a while, workplace absenteeism is up, workplace injuries are up, productivity is down, and law enforcement issues are still there. Supposedly legalization was going to get rid of drug crime, it didn’t. The kind of drug crime merely changed with legalization. Instead of drug crime involving things like smuggling and street dealing, now it is theft from dispensaries in the form of shoplifting, robberies of monies and product from dispensaries in the nature of heists, similar to those depicted in movies. Legalization meant more access, more users and more offenses like DUIs etc. South Dakotans aren’t known for wearing rose colored glasses. We’re hard-nosed, common sense, can’t be buffaloed kind of folks. We see what’s going on in other states. We know the score. The handwriting was on the wall for the forces of legalization.

Before the “we need new things to tax” distortion of Jamie Smith’s position by the Noem campaign, I thought the governor’s race was going to be tight. I thought it was going to be a repeat of 2018 where State Senator Billie Sutton lost by a gnat’s eyelash to US Representative Kristi Noem in the race for governor. The one thing in particular that torpedoed Jamie Smith was the “we need new things to tax” ad by the Noem campaign. That ad was tremendously effective and a dagger to the heart of the Smith for Governor campaign.

Jamie Smith was talking about what might have to be done with taxes if the sales tax on food was indeed repealed and what the State should do if recreational marijuana were to be legalized. His quote was paraphrasing Republican Governor Bill Janklow who “found new things to tax” by eliminating sales tax exemptions and broadening the sales tax in order to shift revenue to property tax relief thirty years or so ago. None of that matters because Jamie Smith said what he said, and the Noem campaign pounced. The relentless airing of that ad was the nail in Smith’s electoral coffin.

Before that attack ad on taxes, hardly anything else was sticking to Jamie Smith. The claim that he was the “most liberal member of the Legislature” didn’t carry much weight since he wasn’t really all that liberal when one got down to cases. The attack ad on his stance on the transgender kids in sports issue didn’t hold up either. His position is the High School Activities Association, and not the State Legislature, is the proper governing body for participation in high school sports and the correct administrator of athletic policies in high schools are local school boards, not the Governor. His stance on “local control” was, in general, ultimately a popular one and one that Republicans used to espouse on a regular basis. Apparently, they don’t believe in local control any longer. The false debate about Critical Race Theory is moot to anyone who knows what CRT really is and is cognizant of American History. Why did slavery exist for nearly 400 years on this continent, why was the Civil Rights Movement necessary, what explains the lynching of African Americans, why is redlining and blockbusting in real estate an issue etc. if CRT is a merely propaganda? Those who want to whitewash our past and teach future generations only the fame and glory bits of our national story are doing exactly what the communists in the Soviet Union did throughout their history. The charge that Smith was too radical for South Dakota reeked of partisan hyperbole. After all, he was elected and reelected to the State Legislature so clearly his legislative district didn’t find him too radical for political office. This desperate attack failed to resonate with voters not only because it wasn’t true but also because of Smith’s charming personality and down-home appeal.

Jamie Smith did a good job of person-to-person campaigning. He was everywhere across the state. He had credible finances, nothing like Kristi Noem’s multiple millions of course, but enough to get on television and do the other things necessary to get one’s message out. However, he had the disadvantage of being an unknown quantity – at least compared to Governor Noem with her long career in the State Legislature, the Congress, as Governor along with her exposure on national television as she was promoting her presidential ambitions via free media on Fox News and other outlets.

Smith’s initial attack ad, the one at the beginning of the campaign criticizing Noem for taking the state plane to faraway places at the expense of her job and South Dakotans, was effective. It was light, humorous and got the idea across without bludgeoning people with the point. His last one, “I’m going to vote for a Democrat Governor – It’s about time” ad was clumsy, and ham handed. Smith made a mistake in not responding to Noem’s negative ads immediately. A charge, no matter how ridiculous, will be considered as true by many voters if it is not vigorously denied. The most despicable ploy by the Noem campaign was to hire a Smith look alike impersonator for their ad tying Smith to Biden (without any real evidence for that charge). I think using his own words against him, out of context and in a misleading way, is dirty – but acceptably dirty. A tactic like that is akin to blindsiding a quarterback in football with a legal tackle. However, I think it is beyond the pale to convincingly impersonate a candidate, thereby leaving the politically unsophisticated thinking that imposter really is the actual person being attacked in the ad, which is exactly what the Noem for Governor people did late in the campaign. The impersonation video was all that much more effective because of the prior one using Jamie Smith’s actual likeness and voice (the “we need new things to tax”) in previous political advertisements. Those two ads, the one with the real Jamie Smith and the one with the imposter, were the knockout blows of the campaign.

The race is now over, and I will make a couple of predictions. Kristi Noem will not complete her term. Just as Dick Kniep (the last elected Democrat governor 1970-78) left office to become the Ambassador to Singapore leaving his Lieutenant Governor Harvey Wollman as governor, Kristi Noem will leave office making Larry Rhoden the governor. I think Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, will be the Republican nominee for president with Kristi Noem as his running mate and that ticket will win the presidential election in 2024. Recreational marijuana will rear its ugly head again before this decade is out. Impersonation ads will be a much bigger problem in the future, especially with “deep fake” technology that is so convincing and available to just about anybody these days. Political campaigns will get even longer and more drawn out as candidates for office in South Dakota have a better realization that the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November is not really election “day” rather it is the end of election season. For example, I voted in early October, long before marijuana and Medicaid expansion or any ads for State Treasurer and Secretary of State hit the airwaves.

I believe the country is on the slow slide to autocracy with like-minded people moving to parts of the country where the folks there believe as they do. We saw this in South Dakota as people from California came here to escape Covid lockdowns on the West Coast and those transplanted individuals then helped drive up real estate prices in places like Sioux Falls. South Dakota is a one-party state, just as California is for the Democrats. That’s not healthy for democracy and doesn’t necessarily make for good government either. People in office now demand the whole loaf, their way or the highway and that doesn’t leave room for compromise, consideration of the minority or bode well for our democratic system.

Campaigns used to be about something, not just relentlessly tearing the other person down. Candidates used to talk about what positive program they would offer once in office. Now it seems campaigns are about fear, hysteria and negativity that descends into downright nastiness. I worry that this trend is keeping good people from offering themselves for public service. I’m concerned that the casual citizen, those who aren’t really involved in the weeds of politics or the political process, will say a pox on both your houses and become disengaged. Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.” If we don’t actively promote democracy, respect its norms, punish those who abuse it and cherish our electoral freedoms then we will look like Russia someday in the not-too-distant future.