Senator John Thune won't be on any ballot until 2016, but his friends at the American Chemistry Council are treating him like he's a candidate with their local ad buy thanking him for keeping government out of your relationship with pharmaceuticals and petrocarcinogens. Senator Thune will be available to chat about the ACC ads, Syria, and other issues with retirees and folks who can skip out of the office in the middle of the workday (1:30 p.m. MDT) today in Rapid City at the School of Mines.
Senate candidate Rick Weiland, who most certainly will be on a ballot but not in any ACC ads in 2014, is hosting a public meeting as well. Weiland knows you're working hard for too little money, so he has the courtesy to host a town hall in Sioux Falls on Saturday, when regular working folks can attend:
- Where: Prairie West Branch Library, the Switchgrass Room
7630 West 26th Street
Sioux Falls, SD - When: Saturday, September 7, 10:30 AM
Weiland's primary target, GOP nine-million-dollar man Marion Michael Rounds, isn't much on town halls. He worked the State Fair, but he's mostly keeping his appearances to meetings with wealthy donors here and out of state. I guess Rounds knows as well as Sam Kephart that corporations, not the people, are in charge. The difference is that Rounds, like "our" Senator from the American Chemistry Council, is happy to play along with the corporate game.
South Dakota's media market dips into Iowa where we should see him as a 2016 candidate for President in the early primary. If it doesn't work out, he can go home and run for re-election. His lobbyist colleagues (don't forget that's how Thune earned his living rather lucratively between runs) are helping him test the waters. Sooooo sneaky.
Rick, this seems like pretty indirect water-testing. Does anyone really respond to such ads? And will any Iowans? Wouldn't it be cheaper and more effective to do a direct mailing to selected Iowa GOP voters? That would be more obvious, but is there any downside to obviousness?
Good questions, Cory. The ads do nothing more than create buzz, if they are pointed toward Iowa and beyond. That may be the objective from people who burn money for the joy of it.
Or are the ads being run to repair any damage from Thune's high-ranking leadership position in the Republican Congress? Not likely, but possible.
Maybe Thune needs his street cred brushed off after being allowed to run without a Democrat opponent, and maybe he wants to weigh in on the Senate race to counter Tim Johnson's endorsements of Rick Weiland to replace him in the U.S. Senate.
Or maybe the pharmaceutical lobbyists are attracted to spray-tanned beanpoles and just want to give the boy a tip o' the hat. There's some major league butt kissing going on in that ad from a source that would not be that popular among senior citizens and folks with pre-existing conditions who are sick being ripped off and forced to choose between eating and keeping up with their prescriptions.
It's an oddity. But what's a lot wierder is a state that is so heavily dependent on federal largesse voting people to Congress who want to kill the golden goose that sends them back $1.50 for every dollar sent in taxes to the federal government. We have damn few corporate plutocrats who reside in South Dakota, but it seems to be the core principle of the Republican Party to feed money to corporate plutocrats and cutting off federal support to everybody else.