From the Black Hills to the Big Sioux, the Dakota Town Hall Podcast.
Hosted by Murdoc in the West and Jake in the East, Featuring Editor at SD Searchlight’s Seth Tupper, Executive Director of SD retailers Nathan Sanderson and Pat Powers from Dakota War College
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Read along with this week’s transcript from Dakota Town Hall
Murdoc: the ungovernable powers. He’s the he’s sitting in. We got, you know, Jake’s in England with his dad or wherever he is. Ireland. Ireland. So, you know, in between Instagram reels of Guinness points, we had to bring in the heavy guns to co-host. Not Pat, you’re up for the you’re up for it. You can actually just make this an episode of your show and then we can, you know, just co-co it.
Powers: There we go. I swear to God, I need to get back to it, but if I knew this would happen.
Murdoc: The old two birds one stone plan. That’s right. Wrapping up May and things are getting interesting here as we punch into another episode of South Dakota’s premier political podcast. A special episode, I should say here we got, we got, this might be the heaviest gunned up group of experts in South Dakota politics put together since the Janklo years, but Jake is in, Jake’s in Ireland, golfing with pops. And so of course we got to go to the bullpen. And of course we bring in family and helping me co-host this week from the Dakota war college.com. The ungovernable Pat powers. Thank you, sir.
Powers: Murdoch glad, glad to be here with everybody. We’ll have fun today.
Murdoc: I think this is going to be a good one. When this came together this afternoon, I was like, Oh boy, this is going to have fun. Toby’s announcing as we’re recording. Okay. So let’s bring in our guests. Pat today joining the show we have from the South Dakota retailers association, the executive director, Nathan Sanderson, champion of the recent 2024 election. I will say, Nathan, welcome back to Dakota town hall.
Sanderson: It’s always nice to remain undefeated Murdoch 28.
Murdoc: Is that what you that was, that was your doing? Let’s see cannabis guys that you, there’s where you screwed up. You should have gotten Nathan. And then, of course, of course, probably, you know, we need a certain level of expertise and authenticity to this show. And we’d like to go to the editor of South Dakota searchlight. Please welcome back Seth Tupper. Thank you, sir.
Tupper: Hey, thanks for having me. I’ve never run for anything or sponsored a ballot measure. So I guess I’m also undefeated.
Murdoc: So there you go. Like that. Not I not Jake, not Pat. We’re scarred with the with the with the tainted smell of moderate. Okay, so I guess as we’re recording this on a Wednesday night. And if I’m if I’m reading the tea leaves correctly, as we are starting this recording, Mr. Dodin is announcing his run for governor is a governor. It is governor. It is governor.
Powers: He didn’t want to put that on the bus. You know, he didn’t he didn’t put it on the bus. He finally let the cat out of the bag yesterday when he made his campaign finance statement of organization with the with the Secretary of State. And of course, that all blew up and everybody realized it’s governor as if that came as any great shot.
Murdoc: So our dude, okay, let’s start here. Seth Tupper, you must have reporters at this thing. What do what do you know so far?
Tupper: What is one reporter? We didn’t deem it a multiple reporter occasion.
Murdoc: Yeah, send all the cameras just send a guy with a pencil.
Tupper: Joshua is there. So he’s on the scene. The only thing I know so far is in our our in our office messaging app here. He said he you ran into Phil Jensen and asked him what’s the difference between John Hansen and Toby Dodin. And Phil Jensen said Dodin doesn’t have legislative baggage. So there you go. There’s one report from the scene. Wow, it’s also an open bar. Josh tells me at the event.
Murdoc: So those guys, if I know
Powers: anything, this doesn’t know how to drink properly. I will bet the farm I’ll bet my entire career on the fact that that group don’t know how to drink properly. Open bar get out of here.
Tupper: No, other than that, that’s that’s that’s the very, very, very early, you know, just couple of messages I received will have the story up later obviously. Josh loved report on, you know, Dodin gave a speech, whatever. I did ask, I did tell Josh to make sure he finds out. I mean, is Dodin running as a Republican? We’ve kind of all taken that for granted, but I
Murdoc: don’t know that he’s actually come out. Great. If it turned out he runs as a Democrat.
Tupper: I don’t think he’s going there, but you know, independent, whatever, I don’t know. So I mean, I assume he’s running it for the Republican nomination, but you know, we’ll find out.
Powers: And actually, Republican is one word that you would be hard pressed to find in a lot of his material. If you go back to when he was exploring for Congress, you couldn’t find Republican on his webpage. And now I think I did see a mention of it on his on his new website that was released a couple of hours ago. He does use the word Republican, but not as often as he does conservative because he really doesn’t identify himself as a Republican. He’s only voted in one Republican primary, but yet he claims to have supported conservatives his entire life.
Murdoc: Okay. Let me go to Mr. Sanderson as somebody who has to kind of, you know, be a Switzerland of sorts. You got to kind of hedge your bet a little just in case Toby can pull it off and be the he’s the gubernatorial candidate. What’s what from your view of the packed and stacked deck of candidates? What’s it look like?
Sanderson: Well, it’s really, really early, right? I mean, the first candidates out of the gate were Hanson and Lems. And as we saw in the recent poll, they’ve got John Hanson has 2% statewide name ID.
I mean, you’re not going to see the, what you might call really big quote, unquote, traditional players announced, I think for several months yet. And so you kind of, if you’re Hanson and Lems, you have to acknowledge that you’re don’t, you don’t have much in the way of statewide name ID. You don’t have much in the way of dollars compared to what some of the others either currently have or have the potential to have. And so you got to start early and try and work grass roots. Obviously, it’s sort of become the more populist wing of the Republican party. And so it’ll be interesting to see how Dodin positions himself vis-a-vis the populist because to Pat’s point, he’s right. Toby, I don’t think the first adjective out of his mouth wouldn’t be Republican. I think it would be conservative.
And that’s really interesting what conservative means these days. But what it almost certainly means is that some of the folks who otherwise would be supporting Hanson and Lems are going to be supporting Dodin and vice versa. We’ve already seen that with Hanson and Lems putting out a list of House and Senate members, South Dakota legislators, who have endorsed Hanson and Lems for governor. Some of these folks, a number of these folks, are people who Toby Dodin gave money to in the last election cycle. And so it’s really interesting to see how this early jockeying is going to play out.
Murdoc: Pat, I want to go to you. Speaking of the list, Nathan brings up, there was, you know, let’s talk about the names on that list.
Powers: And that was maybe one of the funniest things I’ve seen today because it was definitely Hanson trying to quote, own Dodin, right as Dodin was making his announcement. I mean, you see Al Novstrup on the list of endorsing John Hanson. Novstrup, who’s been up there singing Toby Dodin’s praises for the last year, is now endorsing John Hanson. Tom Piszczki, who took money and support and an incredible amount of text messaging from Toby Dodin’s pack to help him win in the primary, he’s on team Hanson. And there’s, I mean, there’s about 20, 23, 24 people on that list, who they were all getting support and endorsements and text messages and postcards from Toby. And they’re all they’re all on team Hanson. Mr.
Murdoc: Tupper, I guess let’s go back to the question that was proposed to Phil Jensen, what legislative baggage could candidate Hanson have that would drag him down? I don’t, I can’t, he was anti pipeline.
Tupper: He was, yeah, I, I don’t know. You know, I think his main baggage with the, with the general electorate is just that, you know, as, as Nathan mentioned earlier, not many people know who he is outside of the political bubble in South Dakota. And so he’s, you know, he’s put a lot of work into being a legislator, obviously over the years, but that doesn’t always mean that, you know, people outside of, of people who listen to stuff like this, you know, know who you are or care. That’s the point.
Murdoc: Mentally broken people listening to a South Dakota political podcast, listen to yourself, go out and fish and would you have for the love of God, squabble listen to this for 10 minutes.
Sanderson: I would, I would like to say for the record that Murdoch actually asked September a question about Phil Jensen’s perspective on the Doden and Hanson aspect of the race, because if you’re really looking for insightful political commentary, that is where you go.
Tupper: Well, you know, I am something, Phil Jensen expert being the one week I spent in peer this winter was, was the week that Phil Jensen, you know, lost his vice chairman ship on the committee by trying to defund the hero, right?
Murdoc: Making him a legend. Okay, hold on. You’re making my point for me made him a legend to these Facebook group people. They, he, like Phil Jensen is amalgamation of a good bellwether test for what that freedom caucus is thinking. And they’re in charge right now. So I guess, you know, in sight indeed, Nathan. Let’s stay. Oh, let’s go.
Powers: You know, Brad, I would point out that with regards to your question on the pipelines for Hanson, don’t forget he was for pipelines before he was against them. God, I love you. Listen to you. You’re the best because he was the one who brought the, the protest or the bill to make it illegal to organize protests on pipelines, which that, you know, that, that was one of his claims, claims to fame before he was, before he decided to be against pipelines.
Sanderson: Yeah, that was related to the Dakota access pipeline that a lot of Native Americans and environmental groups were opposing several years ago.
Tupper: And you’re right. I mean, it’s kind of interesting how these things progress. It’s also kind of interesting to go back to the list of endorsements by legislators. How many of those folks now are going to be able to go to Toby and say, oh man, John asked me before I knew you were getting into the race. Really interesting.
Murdoc: That’s the same conversation everyone’s having. I’m sorry to interrupt. That’s the same conversation everyone’s having with Larry and Marty and Dusty. It’s just a different checkbook or group of checkbooks. Oh, everyone got real quiet all of a sudden. Okay, right on.
Powers: Well, you know, the thing I’m wondering is now, now that all of these people have come out to endorse Hanson, how many of them are going to be on the receiving end of primaries and, and where does, where does Toby, Toby fallen all of this? I mean, I, I think he’s more, more of an egotist than, than an ideologue. And it’s, it’s more about him getting elected and less about believing a certain set of values. So now that he may be particularly vengeful
Murdoc: now that you’re in the race though, you ain’t going to worry about, you know, who’s in the district 18 house. You got an election to win. You can’t, you know what I mean? If you’re with me, you’re with me. If you’re against me, you’re against me. You guys got sorted out.
Sanderson: And I don’t think that’s probably right when it comes from a financial perspective for, for Toby’s own cash, right? I mean, he was throwing a fair amount of money into the legislative elections in the last cycle. You got to imagine if he’s largely going to self fund a gubernatorial campaign, and you have to imagine that he’s going to spend the lion share of the dollars that he spends out of his own pocket. I just don’t see that he’s going to be able to raise the kind of dollars that he himself will bring to bear.
Murdoc: I haven’t seen his bus.
Sanderson: I don’t know. I’ve seen him for the bus.
Murdoc: Listen, say, say what you will about the Dodon campaign. He is out in front in look at how big my bus is and look at this. Look at my rap.
Sanderson: Absolutely right. And so if you’re spending money on diesel fuel for a campaign bus, are you spending it on the district 27 house raise?
Murdoc: Little Photoshop on the bus wrap would have helped.
Tupper: I think that’s right. And then that’s the way to path for having the picture of the giant bus wrap today. And also the other thing Josh did send me. There’s tables full of merch there. It’s an open bar. I don’t think he’s charging anybody to get in.
This is in a park. I don’t think this is a fundraiser. So it does seem like Dodon, all of that money that he may have otherwise spent on legislative races, that’s all. I think that’s right. That’s all going into his governor race this year. And maybe these folks that might face his vengeance in the future, they might have a cycle off this time.
Murdoc: I’d take a coffee cup. You know, I got lie.
Powers: Well, you know, between the primary and the general in his pack, I believe it totaled up to be about two, two and a half by the two, two, two and a half hundred thousand by the time he was done. And darn near all of that came out of his own pocket.
Murdoc: So okay, I want to ask this question to all three of you then you are you are the hypothetical head of Dusty’s campaign on a scale from one to 10. What’s your worry level, Nathan?
Sanderson: Well, with Hanson and Dodon both in significantly less than it would have been prior, I have to imagine. So my level of worry right now, I don’t know, like three out of 10. Okay, ready.
Powers: You know, I would think it’d be two out of 10 because, because literally you’re not worrying about the 2% fighting or fighting with the 4%. You’re worried about Governor Roden and what is he able to raise?
Murdoc: What about the journalist in the room?
Tupper: Well, that’s what I was going to say. You know, I’ve talked with you about this before on this podcast and written about it that, you know, if I’m the Johnson campaign, if there’s going to be one for governor, I’m, I’m very worried about Governor Roden. Not so worried about obviously, you know, Hanson and Dodon campaigns. Although, you know, maybe for a Johnson campaign, the more other people can split their votes, you know, in a primary, the better for him if he gets in. But, you know, we saw the news watch poll where they had Roden already right on the heels or almost even with Johnson and hypothetical race.
So I’d be, I’d be very worried about that. And one thing we notice a lot as journalists and, you know, and I think Nathan could, could probably say more about this, but I mean, Governor Roden seems to be, seems to be running the, the do guard 2.0 campaign. And every day he’s out there pressing the flesh, meeting with folks in small towns, talking to people.
I witnessed it here. He came out to Rapid City and went to five or six different places. He went to Skull constructions, anniversary celebration, everybody who was everybody in Rapid City was in that room and he’s in there.
And Dusty was in DC, I think that they stuck doing, you know, DC, DC stuff. So Roden has an incredible advantage with the incumbency and is, and is, is really working it for everything it’s worth right now.
Murdoc: I don’t disagree with that. I, we’re about to take our first break and not one mention of Marty, which is interesting. All right.
Sanderson: Well, all the way in on that and just say this, you know, we saw here a few weeks ago, uh, and when campaign finance reports come out that Dusty has something like $7 million.
And I was talking with Pat about this earlier. It is 43 or 46 weeks, pardon me, until April 18th, when early voting starts in the Republican primary for 2026. We are 46 weeks out. If you raise $50,000 per week between now and then, you will end up with one third of what Dusty has in the bank today.
Murdoc: I know everyone from that camp’s trying not to talk about it, but you know, it’s real.
Tupper: I will, I guess that’s what I would ask is, shouldn’t he have a lot bigger lead then, you know, to start with, then he’s got, I mean, that’s what we’re,
Murdoc: we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re in, I guess, by this, in recognition, his position is fundraising. He starts from virtually tied if we can leave the polls with, with, with somebody else can have a lead if you haven’t announced yet though.
Tupper: So anyway, yeah, I just throw that out there. I don’t know.
Murdoc: No, that’s interesting. I okay, boys, we’re going to take a break. When we return a quick plug for Dr. Sanderson, because I learned something I didn’t know, which I was way asleep on the wheel on, which is pretty cool. Plus we, Mr. Tupper, you mentioned Josh and he’s covering of the Doton launch.
He also had a story recently in South Dakota searchlight about the decline in vaccines. We’re going to talk about that when we return. We’ve got Nathan Sanderson from South Dakota retailers, Seth Tupper from South Dakota searchlight and co-hosting this week, the ungovernable Pat Powers from Dakota War College.com.
When we come back, we’ll get into that more. It’s Dakota Town Hall. South Dakota’s premier political podcast. Thanks for punching in here on the cowboy on a Friday afternoon or in your favorite podcast player. We’ve got a pack show here. We got Seth Tupper from searchlight, Nathan Sanderson from the South Dakota retailers and Patty Powers co-hosting here is Jake’s golfing in Ireland, hopping Guinness pint to Guinness pint. I said, I think, and next week is a, is a bit of a vacation show too.
Eventually we’ll, you know, punch back into this. We’re doing a summer study. Maybe let’s save hat. This is our summer study. Okay. I will, I learned something this week. I’m all, I’m all, I’m asleep at the switch on a lot of these things because I’m so dumb, but I learned, Nathan, you wrote a book and you’re a doctor.
Sanderson: Yeah. Although you don’t want me to perform any kind of medical examination on you. I have PhD in history from the university of Nebraska. And as part of that, I wrote a dissertation on a guy named Ed Lemon. And so yes, 10 years ago now I published controlled records news and the open range.
Tupper: Yeah, controlled recklessness. It took me a long time to come up with a good title, but Ed lemons, the guy that lemon, South Dakota is named after was really influential in the open range cattle industry in the late 1900s, early or late 1800s, early 1900s. You had a lease. Oh, look at their set. Tupper’s got a copy of the book. One of three that I’ve sold. And Ed was, he had one of the, the largest fenced pastures in the world. He had a pasture that was literally 865,000 acres.
That’s larger than the state of Rhode Island that he had fenced in with a three wire barbed wire fence that was 210 miles long. He was really kind of big influential cattleman. He was kind of like the, the Charles Goodnight of the Northern Plains, if you’ve ever heard that name, kind of a famous cattleman on the Southern Plains.
And yeah, so wrote that book a few years ago and titled it controlled recklessness because that’s kind of how the guy was. He was smart. He was organized. He was a really good cattleman, but he was also reckless as all get out. I mean, he was the guy who’s charging into the lead of the, the stamp deeds.
And he’s the guy who is broke his leg multiple times and horse falls was really kind of a guy who lived on the edge, not dissimilar from do yourself murder.
Murdoc: Oh, that’s it. Yeah. Interesting. I’ll take it. I like that. Like I, it’s been a long time since I tamed offense. I mean, I, I, I guess I can still do it, but I’ll admit it’s been 20 years.
Sanderson: Now you see, he was a little more comfortable from the saddle than he was a fix and fence, but he handled a probably a million had a cattle in his lifetime. He was really big cattleman.
Murdoc: Well, I’m looking forward to the read. Thanks for filling us in. Okay. Let’s go on to some actual journalism. There’s a wonderful story in South Dakota, searchlight and some media outlets in in and around the South, the state of South Dakota, about the declining use of vaccines. Mr. Tupper, you edited this story, Josh. Josh, can you take me higher? I know that’s not his nickname, but we’re trying to get it to stick.
Tupper: So what’s going on here? We’re not vaccinating our kids. Yeah. Well, at a lesser rate at much lesser rates, we did not bring a PhD of history to this story, unfortunately, but we did our best.
Yeah. I mean, obviously you guys have seen the news of, you know, the measles cases that are sort of running rampant around the country more than a thousand cases and more than 30 states at this point haven’t had one yet. As we do this taping in South Dakota, we just had one in a neighboring county in Nebraska confirmed this week. But if you go to a story at SouthCo searchlight.com, you’ll see some really interesting interviews, you’ll see some interesting graphics. Just, you know, while this measles stuff is going on all over the country, we’re in the midst of a kind of a precipitous drop here in South Dakota and the percentage of kids entering kindergarten that are up to date on all their required vaccines.
And, you know, we have some counties, if you look at it as a county by county thing, instead of by school districts, there are some counties as lowest, you know, in the 50s and 60%. Wow. Really? Kindergarten have their vaccines, actually.
Murdoc: That sounds like a heat, like I guess I was expecting you to say there’s been a 4% or 10% overall overall that is.
Tupper: I mean, we’ve gone from, you know, we were up at, you know, 97% of the kids entering kindergarten had their all of the vaccines, you know, seven or eight years ago, and now it’s down to 91%. That’s statewide. But when you when you go county by county, there are some pretty alarming numbers in individual counties where the numbers are pretty low. And what Josh found is a couple of things, you know, number one, the number of exemptions being claimed is really going up. 10 years ago, less than 2% of families with kids, you know, in kindergarten were claiming exemptions.
You can you can claim a medical exemption if a doctor signs a note that says, you know, getting a vaccine would cause an adverse reaction in this child because they have this other condition, whatever, or you can get a religious exemption, which just requires your parents to sign a form that says this is basically against our religion. And, you know, 10 years ago, less than 2% of kids had had these exemptions filed with their school district now more than 5% due. And the vast growth obviously is in the religious exemption category. The other thing that people pointed to that we weren’t able to really kind of crack the code on, but we’re able to sort of mention was Hutterite colonies in Hutterite colony schools, the percent of, in some of them, the percent of unvaccinated children has gone up.
And we weren’t able to find anybody that was real knowledgeable on why that would be other than just maybe they’ve been influenced by the same thing as Influence Society at large and their faith in vaccines has gone down. But yeah, very interesting thing and very timely and really kind of window into what’s going on out there. And there’s a political aspect to it as well, obviously, with this all being tied back to COVID. And you might recall about about a month before COVID, there was a legislator, Lee Qualm from Platte, who had a bill to get rid of the vaccination requirement for schools. That was literally in February of 2020, about a month before, you know, what hit the fan with COVID. And, you know, we’ve been on this thing ever since with people sort of losing faith in vaccines and the spread of misinformation and disinformation, etc. So that’s kind of the run of the piece. We really recommend reading it if people have it.
Murdoc: Well, I want to dig into the politics of it here in a sec, but is there non political reasons? Is it, you know, autism or some of the, is there I don’t I know this is a touchy subject, but like, what are the, what are the, it can’t just be because they someone on Facebook said it was nonsense, there must be actual reasons they go home. These people are aren’t unreasonable in their own mind is what I’m trying to say, right? So like, what are the, what are they must be reasons they think are valid?
Tupper: Well, I mean, what we’re really hearing is, is, is no, I mean, when you look at the exemptions, again, the medical exemptions have held steady. They’re always about the same every year, the same percent. It’s the religious exemptions that have grown. And of course, you know, religions, a bunch of religions haven’t suddenly decided in the past, you know, five years that that vaccines are against their religion. And something is going on there, obviously, where people are using are seeing that they’re becoming convinced that vaccines aren’t safe. They’re, they’re falling prey to disinformation and they’re using that religious exception.
Murdoc: Nathan, I went to Sunday school. I was confirmed Luther and I got all my shots. When did it? When did, when did you not? When did Jesus make you choose?
Sanderson: Well, I was in the do guard administration 10 years ago. I was the director of policy and operations. And at the time I remember celebrating the very high rate of immunization of our elementary school students.
And as a result of that, we had very low rates of some of these formerly common childhood diseases like measles. What I think we’re, I’m the historian, right? So we step back and look at this just a little bit. What we had during COVID was not just questions about the vaccinations and the efficacy of the medical aspect. That was certainly there. Well, you had was a cascading series of government mandates as well, right? And Seth was right when he identified that, hey, this was brewing pre-COVID, right? There were things that were underlying this prior to COVID. But I think what you also saw during COVID was all these other mandates and people just said, enough is enough. I’m certainly not suggesting that that’s everyone who’s requesting a medical exemption, but it’s worth noting that a medical exemption is the easiest one to do if you just don’t want to get the vaccine. I mean, you don’t have to.
Yeah. You can basically just say, oh, it’s, you know, I have a religious objection to receiving this particular vaccination and that’s the box that you check on the form that you signed at the bottom, right? It’s very hard for a government to disprove that. It’s really hard to push back against that excuse. And so I don’t know that it’s necessarily always like, oh, you know, they’re talking about how bad vaccinations are in Sunday school. There’s probably some of that somewhere, but it’s a product of the bureaucracy needed to get an exemption, I think.
Powers: You know, I look at it from the standpoint where as we as we go back in time, we had the disinformation was out there and you could find it on the internet. But but now that disinformation as as we’ve grown in reliance on social media like Facebook, the disinformation is is less out in the fringe zones of of the internet. And it’s more being thrown at us by our crazy aunt who put it in there and now it’s showing up through the algorithms being pushed at us on social media where where you really didn’t go looking for it before. But but now it’s it’s casually there. And now there’s more.
Murdoc: All my yoga buddies are now right. Now my like, I got we I got crunchy canola friends who are like kind of weird, hard writing people all of a sudden because of this trend. Sorry. You say something.
Sanderson: Well, I was just going to say we’re in the third decade of the 21st century, third decade, 21st century. We have more people now who think the world is flat. Then we had. Hey, I thought the world was going to end in the year 2000.
Murdoc: Okay, let’s bring it back to politics though. Listen, you run an anti vaxxer mailer to in in the last June primary and it didn’t work. That was not the message that people wanted to hear. Mr. Tupper.
Powers: Yeah, well, and I think the fatigue, I think that the fatigue from the pandemic and COVID and the restrictions, everything, you know, also plays into some of these decisions on on vaccinations. As an, as Nathan said, I think Dr. Sanderson, excuse me, said, you know, I think some people are just just done with it, you know, and that that’s unfortunate. And I think public health officials have a lot of work to do to rebuild, you know, the spread of correct information and trust. But there are a lot of people who are just, you know, and some people are really active in these online discussion groups where they’re falling victim disinformation and other people have just kind of opted out of, I think, paying close attention to it and have just sort of kind of de facto falling victim to disinformation. The other thing I’d point out is let’s face it.
I mean, one of the guys blame for being the biggest spreaders of misinformation on vaccines is now the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services. So, I mean, where does this coming from? It’s coming straight from the top right now.
Powers: And wouldn’t you say there’s also, it’s more distrust in government period. Yes, government. That is institutions. Yes. And I mean, and that comes about, I mean, that that’s actually historical from from times of pandemics. You know, you if you go back and look at the, you know, times of flu epidemics and polio, you know, they’re very distrustful of government. I mean, it took it took Elvis to get people to do their polio vaccination. Yeah, they were low and then they got Elvis to do it and the rates went up.
Sanderson: And it’s worth noting too, I mean, any time that any single thing gets multiplied, what I mean is if you remember when you were a kid, and those of you know, those of us on this podcast are roughly of the same age, you know, you maybe got an MMR, you got our meat is those moms and rubella, you know, maybe you got one or two other vaccinations. Now young parents are going in and there’s a much lengthier list of immunizations right somewhere in your mind you’re going is are all of these like really and I got to go get a booster now and I don’t know I’m certainly not saying that there’s there’s a flaw in the science here, not saying that I’m saying there’s something in the human psychology that all of this stuff is wrapped up in this perfect storm between the pandemic between distrust and government between the access to information on social media, between the way that algorithms on social media and other digital forms of communication cycle information to individuals. All of this stuff is combining and we’re seeing the results in the story that Josh and set put out.
Tupper: I would add as a codex all this to I mean it you know that you know there’s there’s some government accountability here to you know we couldn’t get an interview with the department State Department of Health for the story. They send us a statement, I mean when you think about where we are in this day and age where the State Department of Health doesn’t want to come out and make a strong statement I mean, you know, I just find, you know, we’re saying hey, we’re calling attention to a great problem that you have. You know, we’re talking to people that are not in the government with with declining vaccination rates, and they’re not eager to come out and give a, you know, an interview and a strong voice that hey let’s reverse this thing.
Maybe they’ll open and said they’re making some efforts whatever but you know that’s part of that perfect storm to I think is just that you know, you have a government that in a lot of places that is less willing to do the work to educate people on this.
Powers: You know, and I thought that was just an outstanding story and and if if anything it was just a little scary, because I don’t think people appreciate that, you know, these diseases, such as measles they still kill people. Everybody says well measles isn’t that bad but you know it still can in a certain number of people can cause reactions that just you know, cause people to drop dead.
Murdoc: And it’s not a good. It’s just like the measles really we’re gonna go back to this guy’s like, man we’ve solved some we think we invented
Tupper: the internet after we fix measles come on fellas. When Lee qualm introduced his bill in February 2020 to to drop the vaccination requirements for school kids. I went back and looked and tweeted about this and I just looked it up. What the year Lee qualm was born in 1954 there were 18,308 polio cases diagnosed in the United States and 1368 polio deaths.
Okay. The next year, the polio vaccine became available and from there on out we eradicated polio in the United States and so. So the idea that you know we don’t want to require people to get a polio vaccine anymore. It’s just, I mean, you know, it’s mind boggling.
Sanderson: One of the fatal mental errors that historians talk about is the idea that we always get smarter. We don’t. We don’t always learn more about particular things. We forget and expect I mean think about things like just basic things like penmanship.
Right. As we spend all this time on a keyboard people don’t have penmanship anymore or the ability to do arithmetic, you know, with pencil and paper. We don’t always get smarter. And sometimes it takes events to sort of kick things in once we’ve gone down that path towards less and less information. It’s not always a linear trend upward.
Murdoc: Well, we’re going to take a break. That was South Dakota Searchlight. It’s Josh Airstory. It’s a great read and you know those guys, Seth, you and the crew do a wonderful job. We appreciate your efforts. Do we have a quick doden update before we go to break? Any breaking news?
Powers: You know, I looked and I saw Taffy speaking and then Taffy Howard speaking and then introducing Toby and.
Murdoc: So Taffy Howard potential House candidate introduced Toby Doden for governor.
Powers: Well, well, and actually I had somebody drop me a note that said that Taffy will be they wanted to wager that Taffy will be his Lieutenant Governor.
Murdoc: Oh, well, that’s an outgoing roundtable. Sorry, I guess we’ll go to break with that. It’s to go to town. Thank you. On the last lap, we’re back here on South Dakota’s most listened to political podcast. It’s Dakota Town Hall.
We got co-hosting for Jake is Pap Powers in the East. You’re where are you at? You in Brookings? No, I’m in Brookings. Okay, Mr. Seth Tupper from South Dakota Searchlight. I’m assuming you’re in Rapid City. That is correct. And then Dr. Sanderson, I presume.
Sanderson: Literally across the street from the state Capitol in Pierre.
Murdoc: Okay, well represented here. East, West, North, South. Here we go. Let’s let’s kind of do whatever. Let’s the what’s the speaking of long term arithmetic. We always put the remainder into break three. Everything else that’s going on. Right. Pat, let’s start with the you had a post about the mighty GOP fundraiser coming up.
Powers: That’s right here on June 14th. The Republican Party is having a fundraiser, a state GOP golf tournament at the at the great Miller golf course.
Murdoc: Now, Miller’s now. Okay. Why are you being so itchy about this?
Powers: What’s your what’s your, you know, it’s interesting because they had the first I saw this was an ad that a reader had sent me from the from the Miller South Dakota weekly newspaper that they just kind of had South Dakota State GOP golf tournament. And for more info called Jim Eschenbaum and they’re splitting the proceeds with the Republican Party and the Miller American Legion VFW remodel project.
Murdoc: Well, you gotta pay for the chili dogs.
Powers: Well, you know, understanding that they’re going to have greens fees and advertising and everything else. You know, you’re you’re probably not going to have a big draw in Miller South Dakota.
And then plus you got to split it down the middle. I’m not sure that this is going to be a big barn burner for the GOP, which is, you know, they’re they’re kind of bleeding money there.
Murdoc: A step down maybe is your position from the.
Powers: You know, a step down the state Republican House caucus and Senate caucuses usually do their own golf scramble and they’re in one of the, I think last year it was in Mitchell and I know they’ve had it in Sioux Falls and other other cities here on Eastern part of South Dakota.
Murdoc: Where are they going to? Where are they going to find a spot for Dodens bus? I mean, it’s going to be like Madden driving around that thing.
Powers: Well, you know, you’re if you’re in Miller, so you can probably just pull around in a field or the course itself and nobody’s going to get too worried. Oh, poor Miller.
Murdoc: What are the Nathan, what you must have eaten at a lunchbox in Miller? You’ve been everywhere.
Sanderson: Yeah, the golf course in Miller, just on the north side of town as you head out of town, the golf course just on the east side. There’s a gravel parking lot there with plenty of room for Toby’s bus.
Murdoc: Not a good room for parking. You’re constantly positive you are. It’s a it’s real annoying sometimes, Nathan.
Sanderson: Hey, it’ll be it’ll be a really nice event for them. I think one of the things that is worth noting though, is it like, think about when say Pam Roberts was the chair, you know, or when Craig Lawrence was the chair, you know, they were really doing golf events for fundraisers, right? I mean, you’re asking for direct support of the party and clearly that process has changed.
Powers: Well, at this at this point, they haven’t they have yet to send out any any fundraising letters and you know, and I could tell you haven’t haven’t been involved in a bit of that work in the deep state.
Murdoc: It’s Pat Powers. In the in previous days. Before I was ungovernable. You know, the party was always working on fundraisers and they would send out mailings on a quarterly basis and fundraising appeals on a monthly basis. And I mean, you kind of have to go after it and the party has, you know, the party’s appeal to donate to is declined ever since they they took away a tax exemption for it. And they we got into some of the campaign finance reform where they they started getting more to packs and and the party’s appeal for fundraising has gone down consistently year after year and now they’re not even going after the low hanging fruit. They’re just kind of sitting there waiting for it to come to them and it’s I’ll tell you what it’s not going to come. I don’t I think to be their lawyer for a second I think they would say they want this is where the direction they don’t need to raise all the money we got the people and the in the in the we’re going to go to the smaller towns because a bunch of penny loaf and bank or dumb dumbs and Sioux Falls been run the party too long etc. I’m paraphrasing right.
Tupper: I think you’re exactly right. I mean that’s exactly the gym as Bob told us and we did a Q &A with him that long ago. And his whole MO was you know I hear everything that’s saying whatever but but I also hear that you know that he wants to he wants to bottom up party not a top down party. He told us he doesn’t think the party needs a lot of money. So this is right according to that plan.
Murdoc: My time at the Ironwood last week is going to be more than this thing raises I’m just saying you need a little cash to get a little cash to win some races don’t you.
Powers: You know unfortunately they I don’t think people appreciate that the party has ongoing expenses. They’re fundraising package from and I say it’s the the tracking for their fundraising that generates their reports to the federal elections commissions that Aristotle I think that can run up to around 800 a month. You know you have insurance because if you’re doing events you have to have insurance and that you typically do that through a writer on your policy. They have a building over in here on that at the state fair that you know what you still have to ensure that when nobody’s at the state fair.
Murdoc: And you have ongoing costs. What’s his name from Canton. He’ll stand in that booth. He loves doing that stuff yet. Who’s the old who’s the God dang it. I can’t remember now the bits ruin because I can’t remember. There we go. What’s his last name. Yeah I know. Oh this is so embarrassing. Now you got to edit this out because insulting them.
Powers: Jim let legislator Canton. He was the.
Murdoc: Thank you. Oh my God. Now we can keep it in Jim Bolin. Okay let’s move on to topic to Jure which is we didn’t really get to this last week but there’s some small rumors out there in the ether that maybe Tony van Heisen has got his eyes on the house. Anything you’re hearing that. Seth.
Powers: You know you know that was that was kind of a topic of conversation that you know if Larry or Governor Roden was not going to run for a term of office that that. Tony would probably drop out or at some point make the leap and run for Congress but all signs seem to indicate that Governor Roden is is going to give it a run. So I think Tony is going to be a loyal lieutenant and and stay in. I haven’t seen any indications to the contrary.
Murdoc: What he’s on record for being also you know layer to your point. Pat or Seth way in you know Larry’s on a tour so big he’s talking radio people that I talked to the governor since they had hair. That I mean that means something.
Tupper: I mean you know. Roden has been running since day one. Let’s get real. I mean you know I mean he’s been he’s been running every minute of every day since the first day he took office and and you know I’m not trying to criticize me. I think it and I think that Lieutenant Governor Ben Heisen has been you know probably behind the scenes helping to plot all of that strategy so I mean I don’t I don’t you know I don’t see any indication that he’d be jumping ship I don’t have any inside information on it. But but but also you know the biggest question is what’s dusty doing. You know I mean we’re sort of taken for granted that he’s entering governor race. Maybe is maybe isn’t I don’t know but I mean
Murdoc: I’m just a Scrooge McDuck pile of cash wondering where to point the
Powers: bullets to that’s what he’s that’s what he’s doing. You know what I think dusty is alluded to the fact that we will very likely see him running for governor and he’s alluded to that fact in interviews but he’s going to be the first one to say the campaigns are too long. And you know when you’re sitting with an advantage that Congressman Johnson has you don’t have to start in May 2025 you can you can afford to just hang loose and do your job and be a congressman for a while. Mr.
Murdoc: Sanderson US House race is a sneaky dark horse for most exciting candidacy in 2026 because everyone’s talking about governors you were mentioning off break.
Sanderson: Yeah I mean I think clearly there’s a lot of discussion about governor right now and there’s going to be. And so, you know you wouldn’t necessarily otherwise always think this but that’s going to be the top ticket race but you’ve got a United States Senate race right. And so we all assume I think that Mike rounds is going to run again for US Senate and I think you would have a very clear path to getting reelected there but we’d have to see. And so those two things are going to kind of eat up I think a fair amount of the political oxygen and you know we’re sort of asking ourselves well who who is going to run for US House in 2026 assuming that Congressman Johnson runs for governor, whole bunch of different people have talked about it. You know I mean I can probably tell you different people talked about
Murdoc: Casey’s crap trees running crap trees running crap trees it and like I would call them the front runner I don’t care what what pipeline people say.
Powers: Well I think you see Casey, there’s also others who’ve hinted about it there’s there are rumors out there about about the state Senator Amber Hulse having an interest in that.
Murdoc: Okay I want to talk about this a little bit. I want to burn them. I go who you got who’s your horse and then they ratted off who they want for governor and then they ratted off Amber Hulse’s name for House and I go mind if I ask why he goes it’s one Trump’s gun pick. They go it’s one Trump’s gun pick sorry I want to edit that out a little. And you know with conviction by the way not up for grabs not maybe and this person I mean everybody’s an expert this time of year but they’re one of them.
Powers: Well and I think I mean isn’t she working with Trump’s attorney or their their law firm. You know, he Amber’s got a close association with with Trump world, and that that doesn’t hurt her chances in in making a connection to get an endorsement but you know then again who knows what he’s going to do, because obviously you’ve got, you’ve got governor Noam in the cabinet. And you know I would think he’s going to value her opinion greatly. So I think it really depends on on who Christie likes as much as anything.
Murdoc: I can I ask that question to you Mr Tupper as somebody who’s probably covered her more than anybody outside of Pat’s blog just being an existence for a long time. Do you believe that is she the king maker here.
Tupper: Well I just I just think nobody can predict what Trump will or won’t do I mean I you know we we have a columnist in a has to wrote a great piece about this recently but you know maybe the maybe the GOP governor races is a race for for Trump’s endorsement because obviously if he comes in and endorses somebody in the primary that’s that’s huge.
Powers: I’m not going to sit here and try to predict what Donald Trump is or isn’t going to do. I think you know the sort of the minefield that’s out there for dusty. That’s that’s another thing that’s out there is what what what would Trump do would he endorse somebody because of noam what he endorsed rodent. Is that enter into the calculus would it sway any would it would have a big sway over the primary. That’s that’s an interesting thing that’s that’s out there I think
Murdoc: also how big is that known bump going to be it’s you know that dog thing lessened it I’m not trying to be a hater I’m just that’s the reality right that dog thing came out all of a sudden the known bump ain’t what it used to be now she gets standing ovations walking into rooms in South Dakota still so it’s not nothing.
Sanderson: She’s very well among South Dakotans and so it’s definitely not nothing there’s no question it’s not nothing you know Trump’s endorsement or potential endorsement I entirely agree with Seth it’s way too early to say I don’t even the president certainly doesn’t know who the president is going to endorse at this point in time and so we’re all kind of playing with. The other thing that I’m not going to say is that Trump is not going to endorse the president but I will say this Trump Trump’s endorsement is only as good as your as a candidate’s ability to proclaim that endorsement to a potential voter in time for them to have it register with them. Prior to vote meaning if you don’t have any money and you can’t promote the fact that Trump is endorsing you it doesn’t do you a whole heck of a lot of good. That’s a good point. And so you’ve got to have your own work in your own you know groundwork laid in order to capitalize on something like that.
Murdoc: Patty Larry ought to like scramble up a jet or something to give to Trump so you can get it you know I mean that’s how you give him a give him a give him a helicopter or something.
Sanderson: I take a cutter plane. You want to give me one from from cutter I’ll be happy to fly around on that.
Murdoc: So the go to retailers one. I love it. You should get Luke Lindberg to get somebody on that for you.
Sanderson: I can’t even afford the fuel for that.
Murdoc: You’re settled for it. A nice a nice hot guy that could get you to and fro.
Powers: You know one person that doesn’t have to worry about that is is man of the people Toby Doden who is jetting across South Dakota to and fro and in his own personal jet.
Murdoc: He’s going to have to paint that plane to write. He should have a whole slew of vehicles. He should be wrapping that. I think he should go all in. I think he should start dressing like Mu Mar Gaddafi and remember them G Gordon Lady Bikini chicks. He ought to bring a slew of them around just all in man. That’s that’s the campaign.
It’s the only chance you could actually have to win. Nothing. Okay. Well let’s talk about Jamie Smith for mayor then guys.
We got two minutes left. I guess I saw the Dakota Scout broke that as he were recording this. I don’t know if that’s the actual I suppose by the time we put this show out he will have announced is what I.
Powers : I think he’s making his official announcement on Saturday. But I see the the state Democrat parties already posting images and other people are starting to put things out of Facebook about that. You know and I think Jamie is well like but the question is how how hard and effort is he going to is he going to put into it and is he going to be able to is he going to be able to combat Christine Erickson who is is
Murdoc: likely going to be able to get into it. And then the gun and ready to go. The front runner. Yeah.
Sanderson: I agree with that too. I mean Christine will run hard. Obviously she’s formerly on the city councils, you know well known throughout town. Jamie’s a good guy too. Really, really nice guy has been a really rock solid legislator. One of the things that’s interesting for me, you know we have a lot of colleagues from around the country. And regardless of the redness of a state very often the larger urban areas in other states are more blue, right.
That’s kind of a common thing that you see throughout the country. And so it’d be really interesting to see if Sioux Falls is now sufficiently blue to have a Democrat mayor again in this sort of era of MAGA. Obviously we had Mike Huther a few years ago and you know there are others who’ve been sort of more in the middle politically in Sioux Falls.
It’ll just be kind of interesting in this era when South Dakota is some dog on Ruby Red to see if Sioux Falls is sufficiently blue enough to elected Democrat mayor.
Murdoc: We’re going to find out about this and more I want to thank our guys great show really this is a top notch Jake really missed out. I want to thank set uppers the editor of South Dakota searchlight. There’s some great articles about vaccine and the declining use of please go read that the executive director Dr. Nathan Sanderson joining us once again thanks for coming back and co hosting this week the ungovernable Pat Powers from the Decor de War College guys sure appreciate all your insight thanks for coming on once again. Thanks a lot appreciate it. From Pat in the East Murdoch in the West we’ll see you guys next week this has been Dakota Town Hall.
