Even now, you see them pawing the dirt. Side-eying the prize. The South Dakota RINOS are readying for battle 2026. After the national Trump revival tour, Romney-McCain lovers from Sisseton to Spearfish are state-level pissed for a reinforcement and assertion of both brand dominance and mission. Their little horns are all out of joint. And bent.
With the now acquiesced appointment of two-term MAGA opportunist Governor Kristi Noem to Department of Homeland Security (God help us all) focus now shifts to obvious question of determining her elected successor, after her Carter-Mondale voting and chest poking Lieutenant, Larry Rhoden warms her seat in the interim. And whoa Nelly, Rhoden inclusive, the roster of potential aardvarks, acolytes and outright jokes is too precious for words. Where’s Trump’s shiny garbage truck when you really need it? Cleanup on aisle Pierre.
I would say we’re about to handicap the field of 2026 gubernatorial hopefuls, but in various and sundry ways, Almighty God already did that to them and it would be cruel to dogpile. Or, gravel pit. Too soon? (Take a hand at writing your own books, Kristi and such things don’t happen.) The primary will be dogpile enough. Ruff.
According to demographic Hoyle and historic rote, South Dakota’s next governor should rightfully be elected in June, not November. That will likely be true again, unless on the off chance, Democrat Billy Sutton is willing to dust off his spurs and become South Dakota’s most conservative executive since Bill Janklow. (Sutton’s lifetime legislative voting score is a dozen points better than Kristi Noem’s and 18,753 points better than two-term RINO Dennis Daugaard, who was congratulated hilariously and accurately on his ceremonial exit in 2018 with a rousing lifetime achievement award by Pierre Democrats. And yes, this actually happened. Billy Sutton himself made the toast) But alas, I’ve no confidence, nor should anyone that the 2024 woke idiocy and now thoroughly besmirched, anti-MAGA outrage of the Democrat party leaves any room for the Billy Sutton’s of the world, political common sense writ large. Pity for that, if not for them.
By way of general race architecture, expect the 2026 GOP governor’s primary to revive the familiar SDGOP formula of “Run the turd and split the base,” a preconceived and preselected RINO frontrunner, accompanied and escorted by one or two token “conservatives” to dilute and draw votes from any genuine grassroots MAGA candidate. Presto, change-O, Dusty Johnson. Tried and true. Again and again. “Turd-Split,” for the win.
Let’s revisit.
In the 2014 U.S. Senate GOP primary, early internals showed another outgoing two-term RINO Governor, Mike Rounds in a potential dead heat with legislative fixture and conservative champion Stace Nelson, a towering Marine Corps veteran, NCIS Agent, US Special Investigator and parliamentary polyglot whose flawless voting record was matched only by his artful and often obscure employ of the Robert’s Rules to destroy garbage legislation and pretzel-whip and exasperate the idiot RINO agenda. (Fun to watch in-person.) As with so many of us who’ve waited impatiently for the Republican Party to transom the Bush-Cheney CIA era, Stace was more MAGA than MAGA before MAGA began, and was likewise targeted, attacked, maligned, smeared and slandered by South Dakota’s dithering idiot cunt class of Pat Powers buffoons, RINO enforcers and leftist trogs. When their TDS smear tactics didn’t work, in 2014, the SDGOP called on the services of now Lt. Governor Larry Rhoden. A man who famously chose Carter over Reagan and made his legislative living backing lawmakers into capitol corners and physically and verbally bullying them into backing the SDGOP big government, little brain agenda. Throw in a seemingly well-meaning but naive Earth Mother physician with a strange penchant for Che Guevara t-shirts and ignorance of campaign petition laws, and the rest is history. Mike Rounds wins in a rout. Turd split for the RINO win.
2026 will be a repeat… and ES&S will tidy the leftovers.
Let’s indulge the sheep and the goats anyway. In no particular order.
–Helene Duhamel. South Dakota old money royalty and television fixture. I’d say former evening news colleague, but then, I actually research and write true things and that produces unfair comparison. Unmatched name recognition aside, the Duhamel family dynasty is “Republican” in a way only Rapid City’s West Boulevard or Boulder, Colorado could ever love. Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney. The family FEC donation portal shows 50-years of gifts to Democrat crooks like Barney Frank, Senators Joe Biden, Christopher Dodd, Tom Daschle, Tim Johnson, etc. Seeing Helene photo ops with Kristi Noem and Trumpian inner circle folks makes me both laugh and retch and says more about Noem than about Duhamel. For a “health reporter” who couldn’t dependably identify and pronounce “hydrogen,” Helene brings all the best than can be expected from fake news teleprompter propaganda and complete public policy ignorance. Helene voted for every spending increase on the menu, voted to support the carbon capture pipeline and voted against a state ban on transgender surgery for children. Still, she’s being runway groomed as South Dakota’s answer to my old China traveling teacher, tampon Tim Walz with a GOP tramp stamp. We’ll see if voters are that dumb, outside the confines of Rapid City’s neighborhood version of San Fran-Sithco, which just picked an SJW Democrat activist as Helene’s District 32 seat mate. One of four retrofitted instinctual or registered Democrats handpicked by Noem as legislative appointments after adopting the GOP label, Helene is very least, a shoe-in RINO pick for Lieutenant Governor, if her lifetime of yearly flu shots and belief in bat soup pandemics don’t intervene.
–Larry Rhoden. Pierre’s longtime RINO Senate enforcer and Noem’s Lt. Governor afterthought. Chosen precisely for that role to reward his years of slime bag maltreatment of the conservative base, Rhoden now sees Governor as logical ascendancy. Wrong on every issue, sold out to corporate interests and unpleasant besides, without even bothering to poll, Rhoden should realize by wind vane that he’s as widely reviled and despised by MAGA as John Thune, without any of Thune’s once winsome, now besieged and bedraggled bedside charm. Making him the nominee would give the Democrats their best chance at victory in South Dakota history. He would dominate the Lincoln Day dinner vote and nothing else.
–Dusty Johnson. Beneficiary of the 2018 Shantel-Tapio “Turd Split,” operation for U.S. House and resoundingly reelected as best evidence that South Dakota’s “awakening” is incomplete if not blind and dumb, Johnson has been Thune’s sock puppet repeater vote on everything from endless money for Ukraine and the January 6th Fedsurrection. Among his long and growing litany of betrayal of America First, Johnson is a China Green Energy agenda twerp and opposed the effort to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Dusty believes scary communists still run Russia and that nuclear war for the CIA is a good plan. Too much to write. He’s a joke.
–Taffy Howard. Bona fide conservative stalwart and 2022 primary challenger to Dusty Johnson, Taffy Howard has only herself (and her obtuse campaign strategy team) to blame for not making that race even closer than her admirable 60%-40% loss. Deprived of a Donald Trump endorsement and subsequent Trump friendly PAC money in ’22 (because she personally hates Trump and wrongly believed that 2020 was Trump’s final defeat,) Howard boasts a solidly conservative Pierre legislative voting record, exemplary education dossier and a shining military service record. On paper, she should be JD Vance. In public optics, she inaccurately rings Liz Cheney. Running a self-inflicted narrow window between her previous disparagement of MAGA and still equally targeted by the far left, a Taffy Howard candidacy for any office would struggle for in-state donors and volunteer energy. Elementary political miscalculation comes with a price. MAGA is now the GOP litmus test for the foreseeable future, and regardless of voting score, any Republican refusing to lock arms with Trump is suspect. A genuine JD Vance-style Trump Mea Culpa, might bear fruit, but is as unlikely as an Eric Swallswell masculinity video seminar. Tough road for Taffy, but not impossible with better messaging. Her voting score deserves it. Pity, given that Taffy is everything in point of fact that Kristi Noem pretends to be.
–Toby Doeden. An early and ardent backer of the Donald Trump GOP revolution and early identifier of a rumored SDGOP succession plan to install Dusty Johnson as our next governor in 2026, Aberdeen businessman Toby Doeden launched an exploratory committee to primary Dusty for Congress in 2024, but demurred last moment. Perhaps he considers an outright gubernatorial face off the better path. Doeden’s quick mastery of pro-Trump social media messaging during the MAGA wave shows both good instinct and feel for the electorate and an ability to speak succinctly to the grassroots. His indispensability as a voice in the fight against the carbon capture and green energy onslaught against South Dakota private property rights added ample ballast to the head of steam. While some have questioned the depth and history of his conservative loyalty, escape velocity has already been reached. Doeden has at least earned the chance to make his own case about the future landscape of South Dakota’s captive MAGA majority and his role in it. His vivisection of Dusty Johnson’s apartheid betrayal of MAGA and the South Dakota base has been entertaining and well hewn. Whether he wants to run or simply inform remains to be seen.
–Scott Odenbach. I’m told in multiple quarters that Operation Draft Scott Odenbach for Governor is in full swing, and rightfully so. As authentically pro-American and Mega MAGA as one could hope and with a pristine legislative conservative voting score, Scott Odenbach of Spearfish has become the man-in-demand as a coveted standard bearer to complete a long deferred final overthrow of the Pierre NEOCON machine. Attacked, reviled, blasphemed and savaged by name by Lee Schoenbeck, Pat Powers and the rest of the festering gaggle of RINO scum, Scott is the rare statesman in an era saturated with deftly parroted political marketeers, devoid of political ambition but distinguished by character and demonstrated leadership. Property and gun rights champion, pro-life defender, and impervious to the social pariah storm of SJW infants, Odenbach deserves what he would never pursue for personal gain and deserves it all the more for that lack of typical grandiose entitlement. He eschews the spotlight, but is rightful contender for a truly grassroots conservative takeover of state leadership.
–Neal Tapio. No comment. I already wrote a dedicated standalone article on this. Is Neal running for Governor, or as Dusty’s positioned replacement after Dusty is given the Pierre mansion? Tick, tock.
In what will be a midterm race without Trump on the ballot, conservative coattails will shrink. Shouldn’t, but true. If RINO dominance holds and Democrats would nominate a sane rancher instead of an ANTIFA woke sycophant, things could be riper than you’d ever expect for a stolen outcome. The SDGOP, including Kristi Noem has spent eight years rigging primaries, doing dollar damage to grassroots candidates and insulting all of everyone by turning South Dakota into a land trust haven and a salad bar for the Green Energy grifters. Combine that with a bloated budget, a squandered surplus and Kristi’s deliberate infusion of Democrat lawmakers into Republican seats, all while abandoning South Dakota for the national stage and the range of possible outcomes is wide and deep.
They may need the rigged voting machines more than ever to keep the RINO’s gainfully employed.
That is, if South Dakota’s DC RINO’s Thune, Johnson and Rounds haven’t already funded and empowered Ukraine to burn the entire world. As above, so below. We reap where they have sown.
