Runoffs, Rumors, and Republican Rifts

And now back to Dakota Town Hall, South Dakota's premier political podcast.

You're back with Dakota Town Hall.

I want to thank our guest, Matt Paulson.

That's dark money, Matt Paulson, joining the show again, as well as District 15 House Representative Eric Muckey and candidate for District 15 Senate.

Welcome back.

As we're talking for the break, there is a gubernatorial election runoff, round two, between Rodin and Dodin.

And Murdoch, you missed the kind of show after election, so I kind of want to hear your thoughts a little bit.

You know, your aftermath of You know, you had time on the boat.

You had beers on the boat to think about it.

I can't.

I mean, I'm just.

i'm floored doden i texted his campaign manager i was like yeah man that was good job that was a good race i'm floored i can't believe that many people are gonna make that mistake but you know there's no accounting for taste if it's this is what republicans get if this is what we pull the trigger on i don't think anyone's gonna come and bend over backwards and go vote for this in the middle of july everybody who's living life and raising their kids and paying their mortgage they got done with this vote and are gonna go vacation and pay attention to other stuff until about october i just don't know I have no idea still, and I'm sure somebody smarter than me is going to tell me why, why the Dusty Johnson turnout machine mostly worked on a legislative level.

I think a dude showed up to vote and maybe wasn't going to vote for Glenn Vilhauer and voted for Glenn Vilhauer, but didn't vote for Dusty.

And I think normally a year prior, that guy probably would have voted for Dusty.

Yeah, Dusty had a debrief post-election with some of his supporters, including me, and he said that they had more people hard-ID'd that said they were going to vote for Dusty than actually voted for Dusty.

That means a whole lot of people changed their minds in the last couple weeks of the election, so that the negative ads against Dusty absolutely worked, and that's just the reality of it.

Well, I think it's a joint of the negative ads against Dusty as well as his own negative ads that probably didn't help, I think is kind of what it looks like to me.

I'm sorry to interrupt.

Dusty being in D.C., like, you know, there are big money races all across the country for governor and Senate and these things.

And, you know, we haven't quite seen them in South Dakota.

And what South Dakota voters have told us is that we don't want that stuff here.

Like, take your $10 million race to somewhere else.

I don't know if I agree with that.

I mean, I agree with that in the sense of this is new and you're right.

You're right.