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Lederman and Arends Now Suing Nelson: No Such Thing as Bad Press for Stace?

I can't tell if the SDGOP machine is trying to keep Rep. Stace Nelson from running for Senate or if they're trying to launch his bid. Republican State Senator Dan Lederman and his well-connected GOP lawyer Joel Arends have added Rep. Nelson to their robocall lawsuit. This questionable legal move—Lederman and Arends seem to be throwing ever more spaghetti at Judge Stuart Tiede's bench, hoping something will stick—gives Nelson the chance to fill the press with comments like this:

“Disgusted does not sum up my feelings on this,” Nelson said. “No matter how much of this Chicago-style politics they bring, I will continue to represent the people of my district, and it will not deter me if I decide to run for the U.S. Senate.”

...Nelson says Lederman and his lawyer, Joel Arends of Sioux Falls, are “proxies for the Rounds and Daugaard folks” who are trying to silence the opposition by targeting them with little-used statutes.

“This is a page right out of Obama’s playbook,” Nelson said. “They’re using the system to target political enemies” [John Hult, "State Rep. Stace Nelson Added to Robocall Lawsuit," that Sioux Falls paper, 2013.06.21].

Such anti-Daugaard language won't help Rep. Nelson get any bills past committee in the 2014 Legislature, and we Dems should take exception to insulting the President by comparison to two-bit South Dakota Republicans. But in this one interview, Rep. Nelson says more of the magic words that will win him love and money from the conservative SDGOP base than all of the time-wasting GOP-Senate-primary faker Annette Bosworth has done in the last three weeks. In trying to catch Nelson in their ever-shifting legal arguments, Lederman and Arends run the risk of giving Nelson an even larger platform upon which to burnish his credentials as a RINO-hunter and fighter of insider politicians and special interests.

Related: Joel Arends has lawyered for Annette Bosworth. If he really wants to keep Stace Nelson from running for Senate, maybe he should talk to Annette and her husband Chad Haber and explain to them how to run a credible anti-Rounds campaign.

7 Comments

  1. Dave 2013.06.22

    Hasn't the national GOP launched a rebranding process to try to make the party more palatable to a wider cross section of Americans? Guess South Dakota Republicans missed that memo with all of this self-inflicted damage going on. And they wonder why more and more South Dakotans, in this incredibly conservative state, are registering as independents.

  2. Rorschach 2013.06.22

    This lawsuit has never seemed very promising to me. I still expect it to be thrown out of court at some point. Sanctions for frivolousness don't seem to be out of the question given the judge's thoughts on the plaintiff's standing to sue and the plaintiff's court filings.

  3. caheidelberger Post author | 2013.06.22

    I wonder if this silly in-fighting added to Tony Post's motivation to leave the state GOP exec job and go work elsewhere.

    R, Lederman and Arends must be pursuing this silly strategy for a reason. If they don't have a case against Nelson, could they just be trying to provoke Nelson, feed his sense of persecution, and drive him into the race?

  4. Les 2013.06.22

    It will backfire to wound or attempt to wound a veteran with this frivolity.
    .
    This is just what an unknown candidate needs to gains state wide recognition as another Stephanie Strong action moves through the system.
    .
    There will be three contenders in the June primary and the dark horse can win.

  5. Bree S. 2013.06.22

    [...] Once he starts being vaguely implicated by hemming and hawing "testimony" from a person who strangely wasn't named in the lawsuit despite admitted involvement.. in robocalls educating the public about legislators' votes to cut state educational benefits to National Guard members while they were on tour.. where whoever made the robocalls forgot an organization identifier required by state law that no longer exists.. why once that happens he's well on his way to a life of crime.

  6. Bree S. 2013.06.23

    People with a past as campaign manager for a Senate candidate who lost due to major corruption scandals in another state shouldn't be trying to pick a Senate candidate in this state who doesn't stand a chance meanwhile dishonestly trashing the only conservative candidate with a good chance of winning.

  7. caheidelberger Post author | 2013.06.23

    Oh, Bree, tell us more, link us more!

Comments are closed.