U.S. Senate candidate Rick Weiland (D. SD) keeps up his populist message and hitting the campaign trail hard:
http://www.argusleader.com/...
So far, Weiland is concentrating on running a populist, grass-roots campaign. At stops such as his Elk Point town hall meeting, Weiland rails against “big money,” “big insurance companies” and “big ag.”
“We need to take our government back from the big money special interests that are controlling it,” Weiland told half a dozen Elk Point voters at Pace’s.
That kind of talk is a good message for Weiland if he wants to win, said Ken Blanchard, a political science professor at Northern State University.
“South Dakota is a populist state,” he said. “If there’s one thing that’s consistent in our history, it’s been a suspicion of big banks, big government, big anything. If I was Weiland, that’s exactly the campaign strategy I’d push — complain about all the folks that are getting away with murder, taking advantage of and exploiting the average guy.”
That populist message possibly creates a silver lining to Weiland’s lack of support from the DSCC.
“Republicans want the Democratic nominee to be as tied to Washington as possible,” Gonzales said. “Being the anti-Washington candidate could be a benefit for Weiland if he’s able to raise enough money and create his own infrastructure.” - Argus Leader, 8/12/13
Weiland hasn't won over DSCC Chairman Michael Bennet's (D. CO) love yet but with other big name Democrats like Senator Tim Johnson's (D. SD) son Brendan and former Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D. SD_AL) showing no interest in going up against former Governor Mike Rounds (R. SD), Weiland is looking like the Democrats best shot. Weiland's been considered an underdog but has earned the endorsement of Senator Johnson who along with Senator Amy Klobucahr (D. MN) and former Senators Tom Daschle (D. SD) and Byron Dorgan (D. ND) have been helping raise money for Weiland's campaign. Weiland has been out visiting ever town in South Dakota so voters can get to know him better:
http://rapidcityjournal.com/...
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Rick Weiland of Sioux Falls is scheduled to top the 60 mark in South Dakota towns visited since he announced his campaign a month ago.
The lone announced Democratic candidate in a race that already has three Republicans headed for a primary showdown next June, Weiland is hustling to improve his name recognition with voters and score points against the presumed GOP front-runner, former Gov. Mike Rounds.
Weiland caused what his campaign called "a mini traffic jam" in the East River town of Altamont, population 19, Saturday as he greeted people in their cars and knocked on three town doors. He stopped there, along with places like Kranzburg and Goodwin, following a town hall in Watertown.
It's a not-so-glamorous way to campaign that Weiland thinks will help him connect with South Dakota voters at the grassroots level and highlight his campaign theme of taking back the U.S. Senate from big-money interests.
"I’m not having a hard time convincing people that our country has been hijacked by big-money special interests,” Weiland said Tuesday. “A gentleman at my town hall in Watertown last Saturday said it best. He said our country would never have declared its independence over two centuries ago if big-money special interests had been around. And he is exactly right." - Rapid City Journal, 8/6/13
And Weiland has been consistent with his platform about getting big outside money out of politics:
http://www.plainsman.com/...
“I believe that we would have had better health care reform if the big insurance companies and the big drug companies weren’t at the table, telling members of Congress how they had to vote,” he said Tuesday in Huron.
The same goes for the farm bill and energy policy, Weiland said.
“We need to drive big money out of our political system and we can do it. We can do it,” he said.
If elected, he said one of the first things he will do is introduce a constitutional amendment to ban big money from the political process. He admits it will take time to get the job done, but he is also convinced it can happen. - Plainsman, 8/1/13
Nathan Gonzales, deputy editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, thinks Weiland's strategy could pay off:
So far, Weiland is concentrating on running a populist, grass-roots campaign. At stops such as his Elk Point town hall meeting, Weiland rails against “big money,” “big insurance companies” and “big ag.”
“We need to take our government back from the big money special interests that are controlling it,” Weiland told half a dozen Elk Point voters at Pace’s.
That kind of talk is a good message for Weiland if he wants to win, said Ken Blanchard, a political science professor at Northern State University.
“South Dakota is a populist state,” he said. “If there’s one thing that’s consistent in our history, it’s been a suspicion of big banks, big government, big anything. If I was Weiland, that’s exactly the campaign strategy I’d push — complain about all the folks that are getting away with murder, taking advantage of and exploiting the average guy.”
That populist message possibly creates a silver lining to Weiland’s lack of support from the DSCC.
“Republicans want the Democratic nominee to be as tied to Washington as possible,” Gonzales said. “Being the anti-Washington candidate could be a benefit for Weiland if he’s able to raise enough money and create his own infrastructure.” - Argus Leader, 8/12/13
I sure hope Gonzales is right about that. Weiland, along with U.S. Senate candidate Jay Stamper (D. SC), have been two underdogs I have been urging people to keep their eyes on. Rounds is certainly the GOP establishment favorite who is heavily favored to win this race but for a Republican in a red rural state, Rounds is running to the center:
http://www.slate.com/...
Example one: He hasn't signed ATR's tax pledge. When Larry Rhoden, one of his conservative challengers, chided him for that, Rounds shrugged and said "he’ll never be a player at the table," and that "if there was a way to come up with even a hundred-fold reduction in spending for a one-fold increase in taxes, he wouldn’t do it."
Example two: Rounds' conservative opponents have signed the pledge to defund Obamacare (assuming there aren't enough Republicans around in 2015 to kill it outright). Rounds won't. "If there was a way to get the Obamacare off the backs of the American public, it would be a fight worth having,” he told Montgomery. “I would want to assess whether or not there was any possibility of success in getting it done, or if there was any possibility of coming up with the votes to have an impact.” - Slate, 7/31/13
Rounds is also one of the original Super PAC candidates who needed outside money to win his three way primary for Governor back in 2002. Rounds is vowing to raise $9 million and with Governor Dennis Daugaard (R. SD), POET and State Senator Stan Adelstein's (R. SD) super PAC funding, the GOP establishment is doing everything they can to buy this race for Rounds. They also need to raise a lot of money to defeat Rounds' primary challengers. First there's State Senator Larry Rhoden (R. SD) who is trying to paint himself as the "real conservative" in this race:
http://www.argusleader.com/...
U.S. Senate candidate Larry Rhoden pushed back at Republican frontrunner Mike Rounds in a speech to a national group of conservative activists Friday in New Orleans.
Rhoden criticized Rounds’ positions on taxes and his refusal to make binding pledges, and even took a jab at what he termed as Rounds’ poor “strength of character.”
“My opponent says he refuses to take pledges because that ties his hands and keeps him from negotiating,” Rhoden said. “Isn’t that exactly the point? It’s time that our politicians be held accountable.”
His comments came in a speech to the conservative RedState conference, organized by blogger and pundit Erick Erickson. Erickson endorsed Rhoden both before and after the speech as the best candidate for South Dakota’s Senate seat.
Rhoden said Erickson reached out to him in the past several weeks and offered him a chance to speak at the conference.
Support from a prominent conservative such as Erickson will help Rhoden’s campaign, said Larry Sabato, a political analyst and president of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. - Argus Leader, 8/2/13
And Dr. Annette Bosworth's (R. SD) whole campaign for U.S. Senate is centered around one thing: you guessed it, repeal Obamacare:
http://www.argusleader.com/...
For slightly less than a month, Bosworth has been a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. And as her nascent campaign begins, voters can expect to hear the Sioux Falls doctor talk a lot about health care. It’s her vocation and avocation, and potentially a way the political newcomer can stand out to a Republican electorate upset with the Affordable Care Act.
“I love medicine. It is the best privilege I have ever seen. And it won’t be available to give to patients in a protected way when this unfolds,” Bosworth said at the Tuesday meeting about the health care law also called Obamacare.
Her rivals for the Republican nomination all can cite experience in elected office. Mike Rounds is a former governor, while Larry Rhoden is a leader in the state Legislature.
Focusing on a major policy area in which Bosworth has experience could be a good opening move — as long as she’s got other arrows in her quiver, experts said.
“She’s got to have some kind of wedge that she can use to insert herself into the campaign,” said Ken Blanchard, a political science professor at Northern State University in Aberdeen. “With no real political experience behind her, what does she have? She’s got her status as a doctor. That’s a reasonable claim — (the Affordable Care Act) is a very important issue. Medical care is something everyone’s concerned about.”
Bosworth said the Affordable Care Act has some good aspects, including letting people stay on their parents’ health insurance plans until age 26 and blocking discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions.
But she called the law overall a disaster that needs to be repealed and said until that can be accomplished, Congress should fight aggressively to prevent it from being implemented. - Argus Leader, 8/10/13
So despite liking parts of the ACA, Bosworth still wants to repeal the whole thing. Good luck with that message in trying to win over the Club For Growth or Jim DeMint's love. Of course there's also State Senator Stace Nelson (R. SD) who hates Rounds and has been talking up running as the Tea Party alternative in the primary but not sure this is going to help him:
http://www.mitchellrepublic.com/...
Advocates for tighter investment banking controls want South Dakota's congressional contingent in Washington, D.C., to get on board with a movement to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.
The 1933 act aimed to curb the speculative investment excesses that led to the stock market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression.
The nation has apparently forgotten the lessons of that earlier time, said Robert Hockett, 62, of Pierre, who unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2002.
"It's absolutely imperative that Glass-Steagall gets pushed through. It translates into saving the nation," Hockett said earlier this week. He believes a corrupt banking and investment system is "looting the population and killing Main Street."
Hockett counts himself among a growing chorus calling for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall. The legislation kept the banking and investment sectors out of each other's business until its repeal in 1999.
The repeal was a mistake, said Hockett, who believes the law's repeal opened the door to rampant speculative trading that resulted in the 2007-2008 financial crisis and still threatens the economy. Speculative trading has created a market filled with worthless toxic assets that are bleeding taxpayers dry, he said.
Hockett raised the same banking system red flags when he ran for governor in 2002, and he thinks the eventual financial crisis and recession validated his earlier warnings.
"Banks have become nothing more than casinos, but they are betting with taxpayer money," he said.
State Rep. Stace Nelson, R-Fulton, and Hockett are members of a loosely bound, bipartisan coalition favoring reinstatement of Glass-Steagall
Nelson's signature was among those of present and past state lawmakers on a letter delivered this week to members of the Senate Banking Committee.
Other signers include Sens.Tim Begalka, R-Clear Lake; Jim Bradford, D-Pine Ridge; Jason Frerichs, D-Wilmot; Ryan Maher, R-Isabel; Jeff Monroe, R-Pierre; and Reps. Dennis Feickert, D-Aberdeen; Kevin Killer, D-Pine Ridge; Dean Schrempp, D-Lantry; Betty Olson, R-Prairie City, and former lawmakers Frank Kloucek, Patty Miller and Lyndell Petersen. - The Daily Republic, 8/4/13
When guys like me are applauding you for not only working with Democrats but also advocating the reinstatement of the FDR era banking regulation to break up the banks, not sure if it helps your campaign to win over the Tea Party vote. It will be interesting to see what happens with the primary. Right now anything can happen but if the far right really wants to defeat Rounds they might want to get behind a candidate soon so they can spend big to defeat Rounds. And while the DSCC gets it's act together, Weiland keeps on doing his thing and I believe he deserves our support. If you want to donate or sign up for Weiland's campaign, you can do so here:
http://www.rickweiland.com/