Denise Ross doesn't go quite as far as other observers who declared Stace Nelson the winner of last weekend's SDNA-sponsored GOP Senate candidates debate, but she sees signs in Rounds's debate performance and ad campaign that signal trouble in Rounds-land. She calls Rounds's attack on Stace Nelson "a move uncharacteristic of him during his time as governor and a potential violation of the unwritten rule that a candidate far ahead in the polls ignores the other candidates."
She also sees Rounds's attack as the first clear sign of the influence of Rounds consultant Dick Wadhams:
Dick Wadhams can be remembered as the guide who shepherded John Thune to a seemingly impossible victory over Tom Daschle in 2004, serving as Yoda to Thune's Luke Skywalker. A decade later, Wadhams is working for Mike Rounds.
I covered that 2004 race and am confident very little, if anything, from the Thune camp was unscripted or unprepared for, even an infamous barnyard expletive uttered by Wadhams to a Daschle campaign aide. I learned years later that utterance was meant to distract the press from another issue, and it worked.
All of which is to say Rounds' retort to Nelson Saturday surely was planned and rehearsed during debate prep with Wadhams [Denise Ross, "Could Rounds Be in Trouble?" Mitchell Daily Republic, 2014.04.17].
One would think Wadhams would counsel Rounds not to expend any more effort than he has to. If Rounds is attacking Nelson, he must have to. Just how close could Nelson be to Rounds?
As a Thune supporter in '04, I thought the election was more a matter of Daschle losing than Thune winning. I'll never forget that on election day my house got 4 "drops" from the Thune campaign, 0 from Daschle's. Daschle's ground game was weak, possibly nonexistent, from the start, at least out here in the Black Hills. If Rounds was depending on an outside consultant to coach him at last Saturday's confab, he needs to re-evaluate the quality of the advice he was given. That Stace has garnered so much attention since the event is convincing evidence to me that Nelson was indeed the "winner."
After that '04 election in which 36 million dollars, or more than 100 bucks a vote, was spent between the two candidates, wouldn't it be awesome to see the guy who raised the least money win in 2014 just ten years later and send the first signal to the big money, that our votes cannot be bought?
It's important to remember that had Daschle won and Thune was still a lobbyist for the Koch machine ObamaCare would not exist in its present form.
Awesome, indeed, Lanny. Social media were just coming into their own in '04, when the election was fought on conventional media turf. Since then I've discovered that social media are an equalizer in my biz experience and I have no doubt that they'll have the same effect on political campaigns. I know my CC pieces on the Rounds-Nelson confrontation have been bounding throughout the twitterverse, based on all the notifications I've been getting.
Larry, that's fascinating alternative history.
Lanny, John, I hope that low-budget Twitter chatter can counter the effects of big money. But Nelson, Rhoden, and Ravnsborg could stand to try a little harder to make some money.
Now that Jason Ravnsborg has called out Rounds for his claim that no state dollars were lost in the Northern Beef scandel, will we see more Wadhams' distractions coming out? Will the media pick up on this story? Will Ravnsborg push this issue?
Is $4.3 million in taxpayer money lost to poor oversight and judgement an issue worth more discussion?
"...to Thune's Luke Skywalker"...
Luke Skywalker is on the side of the rebel forces,
whereas Thune is heart-and-soul a lackey for the evil Empire.
Cory, You may be too young to remember, but Abourezk,Abnor, Pressler and Daschle all got their campaigns going by trodding the state. There was no big money. It was after money got into the mix, that the candidates no longer saw the need to meet their constituents and or debate. All they had to do was buy the 30 to 60 second soundbites to tell the voters what nice guys they were and how much they were going to do for them. When they hadn't looked those constituents in the eye when making those promises, there was no need to keep the promises.
I remember standing on the sidewalk just before the Daschle v Thune televised debate. Lots of Thune supporters, lots of reporters. No Daschle supporters could be found; this prompted one of the reporters to ask a woman near me where they were. She said "I guess the buses from California and Massachusetts aren't here yet."
Moooooo....
Ms Beal, You certainly aren't intimating that John Thune's 18 million all came from SD, are you? That came from the big money interests that wanted to take down the Senate Minority/Majority leader, and they were not all from SD. Wonder if the New Yorkers and DCers sending their millions to MM Rounds will be here for any of our Senate debates? Heck why would I ask, Rounds can't even be bothered to show up himself.
""Throughout the campaign, Thune, along with Frist, President George W. Bush, and Vice President Cheney, frequently accused Daschle of being the "chief obstructionist" of Bush's agenda and charged him with using filibusters to block confirmation of several of Bush's nominees.""
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Does this sound familiar to the current administration? All gaming us?
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""The Republican candidate also drove home his strong support for the war. In a nationally televised debate on NBC's Meet the Press, Thune accused Daschle of "emboldening the enemy" in his skepticism of the Iraq""
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I disagreed with Daschle on plenty but was disappointed in the Dems, SD Dems included, who allowed that bs about a Vietnam Era Vet, from a guy who never served.
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BTW, how'd that war in Iraq work out for us anyway?
I think you guys scared her off. lol The truth hurts. She's probably back with Pat on SDWC. It's safer there.
To answer your last question, Les. It is the gift that just keeps on giving.
The Daschle "campaign" sucked from beginning to end. He had enough money that he hired mostly out-of-state local office workers. They were ignorant of SD issues and were afraid to relay any suggestions or negative comments up the chain. I became convinced that both Daschle and Herseth wanted hirelings instead of volunteers was because they really did not want to hear a thing from real South Dakotans while they were actually representing big money, big brokers, big med, big oil and joined groups like the Blue Dog Democrats who mostly produced only Blue Dog crap.
McGovern was great at small town campaigning. That's how he rebuilt the SD Democratic Party.
And George McGovern had George V. Cunningham to keep campaigning organized. And his name did not start with "cunning" for no reason.
The Beals give Republicans a bad name and are helping drive Republicans out of the GOP in disgust. They are the dinner party Republicans, who have no allegiance to traditional Republican principles but to those who they think wield influence, that the left rightfully trots out and displays to the world as the corruption of Republican principles that exists in the GOP.
To prove my point, I challenge either of the Beals to list the actual conservative Republican principles that Rounds or Rhoden actually have consistently voted for. I also challenge them, since they claim to be Libertarian leaning, to list Rounds/Rhoden's government limiting efforts or defeat the claims made by the Nelson campaign here: http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/218756920?access_key=key-1yp4rr0bokal9tw8nfg4&allow_share=true&escape=false&view_mode=scroll which show both Rounds and Rhoden are big government loving moderates.
Rounds idea of conservation is dispersing library resources around the state and converting that state library space to offices for his sycophants and relatives.