From whom does Independent Senate candidate Larry Pressler take more votes, Republican Mike Rounds or Democrat Rick Weiland? I maintain that Pressler's prior Republicanism and Democratic unity behind their best statewide candidate mean Pressler's a bigger threat to Rounds. However, Pressler's centrist credentials, support for marriage equality, and the nervous Democratic anti-Pressler squawkage suggest he could drink more of Weiland's milkshake than I anticipate.
Stanford Adelstein flicks some oatmeal across the table to reinforce my confidence in the former thesis. Kevin Woster reports that the Black Hills lion asked Pressler why he doesn't quit the Senate race to quit hurting the SDGOP:
Former state Sen. Stan Adelstein posed it to former U.S. Senate Larry Pressler Saturday morning, during the weekly meeting of the Old Man’s Breakfast Club. Adelstein suggested that Pressler had raised good some issues and enjoyed a bit of the old days on the campaign trail, but should perhaps face the reality that he couldn’t win and that with his independent campaign for the U.S. Senate might simply be harming the Republican Party and its presumed front-runner in that race, former Gov. Mike Rounds.
When pressed on the point, Adelstein — an important early backer of Rounds during his improbable, successful Republican primary run in the 2002 gubernatorial race — said Pressler should withdraw sometime in August “for the good of the Republican Party” [Kevin Woster, "Over Old-Man's Oatmeal, Pressler Declines Adelstein's Invitation to Quit," KELOLand.com, 2014.07.15].
Pressler declined, predictably. He feistily maintains that he isn't taking voters away from anyone else, that he has his own voters.
But if politics is personal, Woster lays out some cards that suggest Pressler would take satisfaction in raiding more of Rounds's pile than Weiland's:
First, [Pressler] pointed out that the Republican Party in South Dakota hadn’t exhausted itself for him during the 1996 U.S. Senate race, when five-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Johnson denied Pressler a fourth U.S. Senate term. The GOP’s early love affair with Pressler was fading a bit by then, which was just fine with then-Gov. Bill Janklow, who rarely missed an opportunity to badmouth the Humboldt native and didn’t shed any tears when he lost.
...He still wants that fourth Senate term, denied to him by Johnson — whom Pressler initially, understandably resented, but later came to regard with friendship. You might recall that Pressler visited the Democratic senator in the rehab hospital after his near-fatal brain hemorrhage and even voted for him (much to the dismay of the state GOP and its candidate, Joel Dykstra) in 2008 (along with voting for Barack Obama) after Johnson’s return to the Senate and successful run for reelection [Woster, 2014.07.15].
Pressler tells Woster and his breakfast compadres (hey, does Mike Rounds ever deign to dine with the rabble like that?) that the issues he wants to discuss from an independent perspective trump any personal vendettas that we baseballers may want to pitch. But if Woster is on to something—if Pressler's run and his recent aisle-crossing are motivated in part by a desire to get back at Republicans who left him hanging—then Pressler himself would have to accept Adelstein's thesis and mine, that a larger portion of his voters would pick Rounds rather than Weiland.
Seriously,if rethugs own up to the corruption they have produced in South Dakota,nothing Pressler does or says is gonna hurt the rethuglican brand.
Mr. Adelstein's support for Rounds goes beyond South Dakota. The United States sends over 3 billion with a B each year to Israel. Israel is by far the biggest recipient of United States tax payer dollars each year for foreign aid. Mr. Adelstein would like to keep it that way by sending a groomed and obedient senator to Washington. Without Mr. Adelstein's war chest, Rounds would have never been governor in the first place and he is beholding to the man with the plan.
Mr. Pressler does not play well with that and really showed his chops with the Abscam scandal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abscam
Rick Weiland is also a non player in those games so it is no wonder that republicans would like to see the counter cleared for their boy Rounds. They know, from watching the EB-5 as well as his other corrupted politics that Rounds would not be like Pressler in the "American Hustle", he would be a lap dog to do their bidding. The military industrial complex would have their man and so would Israel. The only sad sacks would still be the tax payers of the United States who once again would be continuing the pouring of money down the money hole. Republican wet dreams to benefit the few at the cost of the many.
It is quite likely that as the general election draws near, it maybe Mike Rounds that will get out the race.
There are some major issues about Rounds' capability that have not yet been discussed.
Weiland missed a golden opportunity to use his FEMA background to try and get some money for the flood and tornado victims.
Pressler leans left and his endorsements of Obama are well known, don't fall for this, I believe Pressler hurts wieland. Adelstein is playing as the set up man. True conservatives know that Pressler is a democrat that is why his political golden years will be spent as a spoiler more so than a true candidate.