Johns and Teupel Fighting for Second Seat?

The latest Madville Times poll results are in! I asked you, dear readers, Who are the best candidates for District 31 House? Voters could pick two, just as they will be able to pick two on Primary Day, June 5. The results:

• Fred W. Romkema (56%, 20 Votes)
• Timothy R. Johns (39%, 14 Votes)
• John E. Teupel (33%, 12 Votes)
• Gary L. Coe (28%, 10 Votes)

Total Voters: 36

Conclusion #1 from this poll: I clearly haven’t worked hard enough this school year to capture the Spearfish media market. ;-)

Conclusion #2: While a mere 36 respondents produce a margin of error significantly larger than Steve Rosenberger’s mustache, those of you following the District 31 House campaign here are handicapping the race about the way I am. Romkema is the incumbent and will enjoy the best name recognition. Johns and Teupel will be in a tight battle for the second slot: Teupel has the same amount of legislative experience as Romkema, but that was four years ago, and Johns has a longer public career as county and city attorney and circuit court judge. The folks whom Johns put behind bars will probably flock to Coe, who has his own complaints about courts and the state telling him how to conduct his business.

From what I saw at the GOP candidates’ forum last Monday, April 30, I agree with these results as both prediction and personal preference. Romkema showed some good sense and spine this legislative session and voted against House Bill 1234, even as the Governor twisted arms and wheeled and dealed for votes to save his unpopular education reform package. As my friend Mr. Fleming noted, Johns stressed education as the most important issue facing the state. He still talks the conservative game of educating kids on a tight budget (his story was about how back in his day, all they needed to learn was books). They aren’t Democrats (none are on the District 31 ballot), but Romkema and Johns are at least pointing in the right direction on education.

Teupel is too focused on “bidness” (and sounds silly when he says “bidness” repeatedly). He declares economic development to be the biggest issue facing South Dakota, which suggests his head is too wrapped around the anything-but “outside the box” rhetoric of his MBA classes and not enough about the proper role of the government in which he wants to serve. If his predictions on the Bakken oil boom come true, the Legislature won’t need to spend time making economic development happen; it will need to exert itself to provide the public services and regulation that keep economic development from hurting our communities.

Coe is simply another Gordon Howie poseur. I’ve heard one local Republican describe Coe’s platform as “The Tea Party is too liberal!” Coe wasn’t completely off-topic, but his speeches drifted just enough from real policy details into Tea Party code words of God and socialism to warn me away.

The four candidates have four weeks left to make their case. Let’s watch closely and see if they can change their fortunes by June!

The latest Madville Times poll asks you, dear readers, who you think are the best candidates for the two District 31 House seats. Your choices, all Republicans, to represent Lawrence County in Pierre:

• Incumbent Representative Fred W. Romkema
• Former legislator (2001–2004) John E. Teupel
• Pill salesman and preacher Gary L. Coe
• Former judge Timothy R. Johns

I choose this race to poll because it may be the only interesting one in Lawrence County. The incumbents in the county commission and state Senate races don’t face serious challengers. The House race, however, involves four candidates with an interesting mix of experience and political stripes (to the extent that four white male West River Republicans can be considered to model any sort of diversity).

Read what the candidates said about a variety of issues at Monday’s forum here in Spearfish. Watch my video of the House candidates at the forum (embedded below!), then vote in the poll in the right hand sidebar!

Poll closes Sunday morning at breakfast time; we’ll discuss the results then. Vote now, and send the links to your friends!

During Monday night’s Lawrence County GOP Candidates Forum here in Spearfish, House candidate Gary Coe from Lead told me that he recently received a telephone polling call. He was asked whom he backs in the District 31 Senate and House races. Coe says he was then asked how he feels about Governor Dennis Daugaard’s job performance.

I’ve heard grapevinally that other South Dakotans in other districts have received similar poll calls. The poll recording does not identify the sponsor clearly. A friend who checked the caller ID said the number given comes up as a disconnected number in Forestburg.

One of my more suspicious readers says these polling calls have only rung in districts where Republicans who voted for the Governor’s education bill are facing primary challenges. That’s not quite the case in the District 31 House race, where the only incumbent in our four-man field, Fred Romkema, changed his mind from the first House vote and sensibly, admirably, courageously voted against HB 1234 on the final round. But the District 31 Senate incumbent, Tom Nelson, voted an unabashed aye on HB 1234.

So I’m curious: first, has anyone else received these calls? Can anyone provide examples of polling in other districts with Republicans who voted against HB 1234?

And second, who would be running this poll at this point? Maybe one candidate would have the cash to poll his or her own district. But a multi-district effort would appear to require some coordination. Who would have an interest in such an effort on behalf of multiple Republican candidates? Could the Governor be harvesting some data to help his water-carriers? Could Gordon Howie be scraping together cash to help some of his conservative Christian insurgents? Who’s gathering this data, how will they use it, and why?

The latest Madville Times poll tests the thesis offered by some K-12 superintendents trying to tamp down a referendum effort by their teachers. Here’s what you said over the last three days:

How will referring HB 1234 to a public vote affect the chances of passing the extra-penny sales tax?

• No effect either way: 48% (53 Votes)
• Tax less likely to pass: 32% (35 Votes)
• Tax more likely to pass: 20% (22 Votes)

Total Voters: 110

A strong two-thirds majority of folks checking in here reject the idea that referring HB 1234 will hurt the chances of passing Initiated Measure 15, the extra-penny sales tax for education and Medicaid.

I don’t hear a lot of support for the superintendents’ stated reasoning that adding another ballot measure will “confuse” voters. However, Mr. Gibilisco does get me thinking about an alternative interaction effect that could cause the HB 1234 referendum to undermine the sales tax initiative. Placing HB 1234 on the ballot reminds voters of how badly our Legislature spends our tax dollars. A drumbeat of campaign rhetoric decrying Pierre’s choices could weaken some voters willingness to trust Pierre with more money.

But if the referendum petition drive fails, HB 1234 stays on the books and on people’s minds. Legislative candidates will hammer incumbents on their bad votes on education policy. A referendum on HB 1234 doesn’t seem to pose a unique disadvantage for folks trying to sell a tax increase in a time of economic stress and cynicism about government.

I’ve heard no rumblings that the superintendents’ admonitions are holding teachers back. Referendum petitions continue to circulate… as well they ought. I do not believe a referendum on HB 1234 will have any identifiable effect on voting patterns for the sales tax initiative. But even if it did, I’d still advocate referring and overturning this very bad public policy. HB 1234 will do great damage to our schools that even the extra $80 million or so promised by Initiated Measure 15 could not undo.

Hey, eager readers! The latest Madville Times poll asks you this pressing question:

How will referring HB 1234 to a public vote affect the chances of passing the extra-penny sales tax?

• Tax less likely to pass
• No effect either way
• Tax more likely to pass

Register what you think in the poll atop the near-right sidebar. If you want some help weighing the options, consider the following opinions:

Mitchell School District Superintendent Joe Graves and other supes want you to believe that the South Dakota Education Association’s current effort to place Governor Dennis Daugaard’s education reform legislation on the November ballot will “confuse” voters and hurt the chances of passing the extra-penny sales tax that SDEA helped place on this year’s ballot. The $175–$180 million generated by that tax would be split evenly between K-12 education and Medicaid.

Fellow educator and blogger LK contends that the supes’ doubts are just groundwork for scapegoating teachers if the sales tax measure fails. LK is at least right to suggest that the supes aren’t stating their full reason for trying to tell teachers to stop their referendum drive, since it doesn’t make much sense for superintendents to think that teachers are incapable of educating the electorate on the main points of two independent ballot measures.

Frequent commenter Troy Jones says some “smart electoral Dems” fret to him that the opportunity to reject HB 1234 will serve as a sort of safety valve, allowing voters to do something good for education (and yes, rejecting HB 1234 will be very good for education) and soothe their conscience with that good deed as they turn down the sales tax. Jones’s thesis rejects the “voter confusion” argument: voters have to understand the ballot measures pretty clearly to carry out such conscientious calculus. But I wonder: I know a few smart Dems, and none of them have expressed such a fear to me.

Neighbor Charlie Johnson got me thinking that we can at least make an argument that the presence of HB 1234 should drive more yes votes on the sales tax. If folks really think HB 1234′s merit pay and bonuses for math-science teachers are good ideas, they have an obligation to find a way to pay for those new policies. When they vote yes on HB 1234, they’ll have a funding mechanism right across from their pencils on the ballot. Perhaps good conscience will strike these policymakers and drive them to pay for the reforms they want.

Now tell us all what you think! Vote above, then register your analysis here in the sidebar. South Dakota awaits your profound punditry!

Poll stays open until Wednesday breakfast, after which we’ll discuss the results. Vote now… and tell your friends!

Rep. Steve Hickey observed on Facebook that during Thursday’s committee hearing, HB 1234, Governor Dennis Daugaard’s package of education reforms, “was referred to as a botched meatloaf. Nothing they add would make anyone want to eat it.”

According to yesterday’s poll by that Sioux Falls paper, not many South Dakotans want a taste of that meatloaf:

87.7% disapproval. Review the poll archive, and you’ll find the Governor’s education ideas are less popular than the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s lawsuit against Budweiser. 87.7% is a larger percentage than those who support Rep. Deelstra’s sensible county cremation bill (which passed unanimously! Nice work, Bob!) That’s a larger percentage than those who think changing the state flag is unnecessary. That’s larger percentage than the Republican supermajority in the State Senate.

87.7% disapproval. Flip to the 12.3% approval, and you find Governor Daugaard’s education proposals are just slightly more popular than Congress. As John Thune and Kristi Noem keep reminding us, that kind of approval rating means your support is down to blood relatives and paid staffers (which in Pierre is pretty much the same thing, right?).

The number who voted in yesterday’s online poll, 1387, was more than double the average turnout for that Sioux Falls paper’s polls. A lot of people give a darn about HB 1234, and darn few want it to pass.

My petition asking the Legislature to chuck HB 1234 and convene a task force to study education now has gathered 2200 signatures in nine days. Please realize, that’s more signatures than I would need to run for Congress in South Dakota… as a Republican.

One of Rep. Hickey’s Facebook friends says that “if the education lobby is against it, it must be a good bill for the taxpayer.” Yet Rep. Hickey himself is among fourteen Republican legislators expressing everything from reservations about to outright opposition to HB 1234.

Well-known Republican, school board member, and District 4 House candidate Fred Deutsch doesn’t want to eat Governor Daugaard’s meatloaf, either:

As good intentioned as the bill is (to raise academic achievement) we have real concerns it will undermine the foundations of our collaborate success and lead to the opposite of what’s desired. I have no doubt some schools could benefit from HB1234, but not [Watertown]. It would make creating environments of academic success more difficult [Fred Deutsch, blog comment, Madville Times, 2012.02.24].

Almost nobody likes HB 1234. Legislators keep dropping the meatloaf on the floor, then throwing the same stale, crummy bits back in the pan with more lint from the floor and generic ketchup on top.

Don’t serve this garbage to your kids. Hit the crackerbarrels today, tell your legislators to throw HB 1234 out… and then let’s get together this summer to grill up some real solutions!

Public Policy Polling conducted polls to find out what people across the country think of the fifty states. If South Dakota’s Legislature has done some silly things, it hasn’t hurt our out-state image too much: 42% of respondents said they view South Dakota favorably, while only 8% said they view the state unfavorably. That 34-point favorability margin is the fourth largest in the nation. Only Hawaii, Colorado, and Tennessee score better on that metric.

Of course, those numbers show that as many people don’t care one way or the other as actually have an opinion about South Dakota. But perhaps remarkably, every one of our neighboring states is viewed apathetically by even larger portions of poll respondents. Call those numbers support for the notion that the upper Midwest really is flyover country.

The full report includes cool state-by-state crosstabs. Here’s the demographic breakdown of South Dakota’s results:

More men than women have an opinion about South Dakota. The proportional like/dislike numbers are about the same.

There’s an interesting U-shaped distribution: a little more favorability for South Dakota among the young and the old, with a drop in favorability among the 30-65 crowd. Hmm… maybe working families with kids in school find it a little harder to make it here? Or maybe the folks taking kids on long car rides along I-90 come away thinking, “We’re not making that trip again until we’re retired!”

Hispanics like us best! Is the dairy industry getting us some good Spanish press? PPP should have included a Native American column on this crosstab.

If this crosstab surprises you, you’re not paying attention.

Ditto here: when they pay attention, liberals and Dems get a less favorable opinion of our state than do Republicans. But they should pay more attention to the war South Dakota Republicans are waging on women, education and science… and send reinforcements!

Oh, I know, I’m just obsessed….

KELO wasted airtime last week talking about a December poll commissioned by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that found Stephanie Herseth Sandlin would have beat Kristi Noem in an election held in December 2011… which is silly, of course, since Stephanie Herseth Sandlin is not running, and since elections aren’t held in December.

But for those of you who are interested, the complete poll has been posted online. The D.C. pollsters didn’t have the courtesy to ask respondents about the actual announced challengers, Jeff Barth and Matt Varilek. But if there is any value in this poll of registered South Dakota voters, it may lie in the following data points:

• In all three swings at the question, after being read various propaganda for and against Noem and SHS, respondents dropped Noem by at least a ten-point spread.
• Counting leaners, the sample split 49% GOP, 13% Indy, and 39% Dem.
• Not counting leaners, the sample split 36% GOP, 36% Indy, and 28% Dem.
• The issue on which Noem stands to take the biggest political hit is her vote for Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to voucherize Medicare. Not far behind: her votes to maintain subsidies for Big Oil while raising payroll taxes for everyone else.
• Governor Dennis Daugaard and Senator Tim Johnson both have job approval ratings in the 70% range. Rep. Noem’s job approval is at 56%.
• Noem’s overall favorability is under 50%.

Beating Noem will not be easy. But the DCCC poll suggests she is far from the “bulletproof” candidate Ed Randazzo wishes she were. The DCCC poll points to the issues challengers can focus on to take her out. Go get ‘er, boys!