Bill Janklow made the news last week by closing his state campaign account and converting nearly $852,000 in old campaign donations to personal use. (Any of you old donors have a beef with that?)
A month ago, another former South Dakota governor, M. Michael Rounds, made news by starting his own political action committee, the Peter Norbeck PAC. The good Dr. Schaff sees the new Norbeck PAC as Rounds's first clear signal that he's running for Senate in 2014.
So what may we divine from my state senator Russell Olson's creation of the "Leading South Dakota PAC"? Senator Olson filed his statement of organization two weeks before Rounds filed his. Like Rounds, Olson declares that his PAC's purpose is to elect Republican candidates to local, legislative, and statewide office. (A legislator himself, Olson almost forgot to write in "legislative.") Olson's treasurer is Rob Skjonsberg, former Rounds chief of staff and current senior VP of public policy at Poet Ethanol.
Like that generous Mitt Romney fellow, both Rounds and Olson appear to be positioning themselves to play sugar daddy to campaigners and future donor bush-beaters statewide. Like Rounds, Olson has demonstrated his ability to pile up big campaign cash. And like Rounds, Olson seems to lack the ability to come up with any really creative or significant policies or a positive vision for legislating or governing beyond crass crony capitalism.
Senator Olson also seems to lack the attention span necessary to comprehend the full import of a single Twitter message. Perusing my state senator's Twitter feed (which Olson has blocked me, a taxpaying constituent, from following since January), I find the senator has issued the following ill-thought retweet:
Russell Olson retweets from some anonymous satirist, "If I'm half as good a governor as Bill Janklow and 60 times as good a man, I'll have served South Dakota well."
Russ, did you not read the entire Tweet? Do you not get the insult therein? Don't you think a little commentary of your own might be in order, like even a simple "#uncool" or "#jerk" (since even Stephanie Herseth Sandlin agrees we're supposed to say nothing but nice things about the terminally ill Janklow during the extended pre-death media wake that he gets to attend)?
Olson can't interpret a simple Tweet properly, yet we elect him to make laws for us... and he perhaps thinks he can get us to elect him to a higher office. Maybe that's why the media noticed Rounds's PAC but ignored (as far as I can tell) Olson's money move: attentive observers know that Olson has the bucks but not the brains to make his move to higher office.
I suspect there are enough politicos of all parties and perspectives who will say only nice things about Janklow simply because they aren't Janklowvian themselves and also because they still have hopes of staying in office or advancing in some way and don't want to irritate all those nice midwest proclivities for niceness too often satirized at Lake Woebegone.
As the "Guy like Doug from Winner" that Janklow claimed on SDPB-Radio "were responsible for all the economic slowness in South Dakota", I don't think anything but realism regarding Janklow is appropriate even if we have real sympathy for him and his family in the current situation.
Most of the folks who are saying nice things about Janklow were his apparatchik, who are still so frightened of his Stalinistic aura that they are crapping their pants in anticipation of his coming clean before the end.
http://decorumforum.blogspot.com/2011/11/kuchen-up-trouble-in-pierre.html
I like Janklow but also thought he could come across as a jerk. I don't think he really ever thought about what he said and how the tone and deliverly could hurt people.
You wonder what he would have said about a political rival that was suffering from a similar illness... Would he have been sympathetic or said good ridance.
There is a lot from this situation we can learn from.
Regarding Russ Olson I am inclined to think that most people don't think Russ is an important enough person to give time to.
But Mike, a lot of people have thought he's worth giving money to. Will that financial drawing power fade in larger races?
I sure hope so.
If anybody has access to newspaper records at the time of Ted Kennedy and his vehicle crash and the resulting drowning death, I wonder what comments Janklow made about that.
Alas, Doug, Janklow wasn't in a mover-shaker position yet (1969) for the press to seek his opinion on such issues, was he?
Cory, I guess I had forgotten how long ago that was. Janklow visited Vermillion and played poker at our apartment in Vermillion during Dakota Day in those years. He wasn't in AG office until 1975.
I guess this probably warrants an Emily Litella style "Nevermind."
Poet chucks 20K at candidate destined to lose:
http://www.argusleader.com/article/20111207/NEWS/312070017/Poet-big-political-donor-Newt-Gingrich?odyssey=tab