A paragraph should have a topic sentence and sentences that support it. Here's what passes for a paragraph in the Rapid City Journal as Michael Sanborn warns Brendan Johnson and Kristi Noem not to challenge their respective party front-runners in a Senate primary:
Primaries tend to weaken the winner, divide a party, and diminish its chances for success. Take a look at the 2002 Republican primary for governor between Mark Barnett, Steve Kirby and Rounds. Rounds was the big winner when Barnett and Kirby resorted to one of the dirtiest campaigns between two people of the same party in South Dakota history. The Democrats had particularly weak candidates and Rounds sailed into the governor’s office [Michael Sanborn, "Spinning the Wheel for Senate," Rapid City Journal, 2013.04.10].
Sanborn says primaries are bad for the party, then provides an example of a brutal GOP primary from which the victor "sailed" to victory in the general election. That example doesn't prove the point Sanborn was hoping to make.
Neither does recent election history. Just looking at the numbers, we can't really tell if primaries weaken either party in South Dakota gubernatorial elections, because in five of the last seven elections, either both parties had primaries or both parties didn't.
| Year | Nov. Matchup | GOP vote | Dem vote | GOP primary | Dem primary |
| 2010 | Daugaard vs. Heidpriem | 61.51 | 38.49 | yes | no |
| 2006 | Rounds vs. Billion | 61.69 | 36.13 | no | yes |
| 2002 | Rounds vs. Abbott | 56.77 | 41.92 | yes | yes |
| 1998 | Janklow vs. Hunhoff | 64.04 | 32.85 | no | no |
| 1994 | Janklow vs. Beddow | 55.36 | 40.52 | yes | yes |
| 1990 | Mickelson vs. Samuelson | 58.90 | 41.10 | no | no |
| 1986 | Mickelson vs. Herseth | 51.81 | 48.19 | yes | yes |
The 2006 and 2010 gubernatorial elections provide us the only chance to compare. In 2006, Governor Rounds faced no primary challenge. His Democratic challenger Jack Billion did. Rounds got 61.69% of the vote, the second-highest total for a recent GOP gubernatorial candidate. Billion got 36.13%, the second-lowest total for a recent Dem gubernatorial candidate.
In 2010, Dennis Daugaard had to fight off four challengers in the GOP primary while Dems coronated Scott Heidepriem. In the general election, Daugaard broke 60%, just like Rounds in 2006. Heidepriem topped Billion's 2006 tally by two percentage points but still underperformed the recent Dem average.
Primaries seem less indicative of party success in this chart than incumbency. Mickelson added five percentage points on his second run; Janklow, nine (technically his fourth run); Rounds, five. (Those numbers may be the best predictor of the fact that Stephanie Herseth Sandlin will either run for Senate or sit on her hands as Gov. Daugaard aims for 70%.)
Nothing here says primaries hurt the party. Victory is more a matter of finding the candidate with glad-handing go-get-'em and buckets of money. A good stiff primary may help us find those candidates.
It's all about perspective. A primary between Kirby and Barnett and Rounds didn't help anyone but Rounds because he skated through. Noem, Nelson and Curd were helped by a primary because it allowed people to go through and entire spring and summer knowing who Kristi Noem was.
Neither of these were personal attack oriented primaries. 2014 would probably damage one of them really badly and hurt the other. Both Noem and Rounds would have money and need to damage the other to win.
Same with SHS and Brendan Johnson. Brendan Johnson would have to tear SHS down if the PPP polls were right.
Janklow vs Abdnor didn't help anyone in the GOP.
Primaries are great but when two heavy weights go at it that means it's probably not good for the party.
The one trend I see is that when both parties have primaries - the races are closer.
Primaries get more people interested if the candidates don't go into dumb attack mode or are all so utterly bland and boring that all they have in their briefcase of talent is attack, attack, attack.
I think much of the GOP cant is nonsense mythology, but that is about all we get from that side of the aisle. So much of it is nonsense that Democrats should be able to shred it like cabbage, but they don't. The more cynical among us are convinced the current state of political miasma is because both Republican and Democratic parties now represent only the very rich and already powerful. Vigorous primaries might shake the parties out of the big money rut.
Miller v Janklow was at least as rancorous as any primary: maybe Marty should take on Marion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zJpr-bB1sg
Mike, I think you are right about the Rounds, Kirby, Barnett primary. That primary almost saw the total destruction of the GOP party candidate - in fact it destroyed the two front runners and catapulted the third man in the hierarchy, Rounds, to the nomination. The weakness of that candidate shows on the relative lackluster support of the GOP in 2002. Without Rounds, it is interesting to posture if the GOP would have totally imploded if not for "option 3" Rounds. By his second run, he was an incumbent and had the pro-forma GOP stamp of approval.
Historically, primaries were established to favor the grassroots party members against the centralizing forces of special interests and party hacks. With the explosion of money allowing the purchase primary campaigns a lot of the populist cleansing aspect of primaries have been lost. Still, it's far better to have people select the candidates following a campaign than to allow someone to simply buy a nomination through use of name recognition.