Backers of Rep. Stace Nelson's campaign for U.S. Senate are floating on Twitter the claim that Nelson got the most votes of all South Dakota State Representatives yet gets called "unelectable" by the Rounds-Wadhams campaign machine.
I haven't seen the Rounds-Wadhams press release using that language about the Fulton Fulminator. But we can look at the election results from 2010 and 2012 to check this claim. The truth depends on how technical you want to be.
The claim that Nelson got the most votes of any state rep. cannot refer to the 2010 election. In his first run for office, Nelson came out first out of four candidates in District 25, winning 4,814 votes. But in contested races in 2010, 27 winners of State House seats got more votes than that. 14 of those 27 winners were in three-way races, meaning it was easier for them to rack up votes than Nelson in his four-way race.
In 2012, Nelson switched from District 25 to 19 (a big change, making him campaign more south toward Hutchinson, Douglas, and Bon Homme instead of east toward Minnehaha and Moody). He boosted his vote total 44% to 6,956. No House candidate in a contested race got more votes than that. But note that this time Nelson was in a three-way race. The next vote-getters were Jim Bolin (6,760), David Lust (6,355), Jacqueline Sly (6,308), quitter and woman-hater Jon Hansen (6,217), Dan Dryden (6,145), Scott Parsley (6,069), and Brock Greenfield (6,049). All of those but Sly fought four-way races and thus had to work harder to break 6,000.
Nelson's backers can say pish-posh to all this analysis, but if we just look at the words and ask which state rep got the most votes in the 2012 general election, they'd still be wrong to say "Stace Nelson." 7,737 voters marked Mike Verchio's name on the District 30 House ballot. 7,122 District 12 voters checked Mark Mickelson. Verchio and Mickelson had no Democratic opponents on their two-man ballots, but if we're looking at the strict meanings of words, Reps. Verchio and Mickelson got more votes than Rep. Nelson in the 2012 election.
The speculation at the State Fair is how soon will Stace Nelson explode. As a student of grassroots politics, I'm fascinated by him. He's got incredible potential to dominate South Dakota politics and make a real mark on Washington. But ... he's got to stop running like a complete neophyte with a bad temper. He needs a serious handler to run his campaign. He needs a smart press operative who can keep him on message and stay on message -- and never make dumb comments again. He needs a hard-charging fundraiser who knows the deep pockets in D.C. and can organize bundlers throughout the state to raise serious money fast fast fast!
A candidate who is also the campaign manager and also the press operative is as they say about defendants who represent themselves in court: They have a fool for a client.
Get serious, Stace. Put together your A Team and be the candidate I know you can be. Your opponent hasn't had a tough election in his entire life and people are really not that enamored with him. If you do this right, you will defeat him.
Rick, have any State Fair-goers witnessed any Stace Nelson temper?
The real test of a candidate and his votes based on the registration.
Since Stace's district was the most GOP by registration of all the contested races, his vote total actually had the one of the lowest differential over party registration. This is most significant since as you note there was only Democrat in the race.
A low differential means you get little cross-over and he got little even though he was missing a Dem opponent.
Stace's supporters should not use this as a "positive" as it is easy to convert into a negative, which mathematically relative to the other GOP candidates his performance was actually one of the worst.
P.S. That "poor" performance shouldn't be used by one of his opponents as a negative (unless his supporters use the inaccurate characterization) because a lot depends on strength of opponent and other factors which would require historical analysis of the district voting patterns. The claim just is meaningless.
Tough crowd! Not bad results for a guy who was slimed in the press and redistricted into a 75% new district..
..and who did not campaign hard.. not to fear this time!
@rick working on it.