Breathe a sigh of relief, Blue Dog haters: Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin will not run for the South Dakota Senate seat. This leaves Rick Weiland as the lone Democrat in the race after Brendan Johnson, US Attorney and son of Senator Tim Johnson, signaled no interest in the race. Weiland is viewed as being “more liberal” but the last time he was in a statewide race was 1996, when he lost to John Thune in the House election, so who knows how he’s going to position himself in this race. Weiland also lost the primary to Herseth-Sandlin in 2002.
The good news is that Weiland ran Daschle’s state offices, and Daschle had an excellent field operation, so he has what it takes to run a good campaign. And with Herseth-Sandlin out, there won’t be a primary. The bad news is that he’s got a solid opponent in former governor Mike Rounds. This race isn’t like Montana or North Dakota in 2012, where Tester and Heitkamp faced weak, unlikable, incompetents Denny Rehberg and Rick Berg. If you want to see a similar contest, look at the 2010 election in North Dakota for Byron Dorgan’s open seat, which was won by popular governor John Hoeven, who crushed Tracy Potter.
To give you a flavor for just how hard it is for Democrats in those states, Potter was replaced in the North Dakota Senate by single-issue abortion nutcase Margaret Sitte, who thinks life begins as the sperm swims towards the egg, and wants that enshrined in law. Potter won a seat in a district that elected this crazy lady, so he was probably at least an OK candidate, but he got no national support, raising a pathetic $117K to Hoeven’s $3.4 million. Weiland has the political connections necessary to at least raise some money, so maybe he can make this a real race instead of a 76/22 Tracy Potter death march.
sb
So… yay?
askew
Not a fan of S-D as she went out of her way to take a public shit on fellow Dems too many times. I prefer Blue Dogs who don’t spend time stabbing Dems in the back in the press. Blue Dogs like Bill Nelson (FL) are much preferable to Blue Dogs like Ben Nelson (NE). However, she was the best chance we had at holding that seat and I wish she would have run.
mistermix
@askew: The pattern of winners in federal elections in the Dakotas and Montana is a likeable, centrist/independent Democrat (Tester, Heitkamp, Daschle, Johnson) versus an unlikeable or past their prime Republican (Rehberg, Berg, Abdnor, Pressler). Stephanie H-S is the former. Rounds is not the latter. So she passed.
maya
South Dakota. Where North Dakota vacations.
cmorenc
The 2014 Senate races (and control of the Senate the last two years of the Obama administration) are the one big hurdle the dems have to leap before a vastly more favorable Senate race map, favorable demographic trends, and more democratic voter turnout-friendly Presidential year electoral dynamics kick in for 2016. IMHO if the GOP does succeed in winning narrow majority control of the Senate in 2014, both houses of Congress, they’ll amplify their efforts to wreck and bog down the last two years of the Obama administration in every way possible: investigations, finances, taxes…it’ll be nothing but a battle of vetoes vs subpoenas for Senate investigations into a legion of attempts to gin up bullshit scandals our of piffle. Should Obama happen to get another SCOTUS vacancy in that interim, the GOP will go into full-press obstruction mode against anyone he nominates, hoping to keep the seat vacant until after the 2016 elections.
This is one time when the ability of the dems to keep a one or two seat Senate majority is far more important than a long-shot attempt to win back the house in an off-year election (prospects would be better to retake the house in 2016 if Hillary runs and can win by similar margins to Obama in 2008).
liberal
There should be exactly two criteria for Blue Dogs:
(1) Are they reasonably “blue”/liberal given the ideological composition of the voters they’re representing?
(2) Do they try to get out in front too much and gum everything up for the bluer parts of the party?
liberal
@askew:
Yeah, this is kind of like my (2) above.
gene108
@cmorenc:
Launching a cycle of investigations will allow the 2016 GOP nominee to run on a platform of “restoring honor and integrity” to the White House, like Bush, Jr. did in 2000.
That beats having to run on some kind of actual “plan” for the future, like Romney did in 2012.
Ash Can
So instead of Herseth-Sandlin losing it’ll be Weiland losing? What difference does it make, then?
piratedan
@Ash Can: he’s purer so the flames should be prettier when he crashes and burns
Steeplejack
It’s depressing to think that about 200,000 voters are probably going to send another Republican tool to the Senate to work on the other 300 million of us.
Good job, South Dakota! Please let us continue to send you $1.21 for every dollar you pay in federal taxes.
Brandon
Nothing less interesting than handicapping what we all know to be a sure loser. How about a nice slideshow of kittens instead? At least that would fun.
rikyrah
well, if you say this Dem is the best we can get, then ok
JGabriel
mistermix @ top:
Every sperm is sacred?
Doesn’t that make male masturbation the same as abortion?
Bill Murray
@mistermix: that isn’t really true for SD. Daschle was elected as an Abourezk/McGovern liberal and later turned in to a DLC centrist. Johnson was fairly centrist, but Pressler wasn’t really past his prime or particularly unlikeable, although he is dumb as a post. Herseth-Sandlin won initially because of name recognition and some revulsion at Janklow.
Heck, Rounds only got the Republican nod for Governor because of Barnett and Kirby saturating the airways with very nasty ads about each other and he was seen as a nice guy, which is still how he is viewed. I doubt any Democrat would get 45% barring Rounds doing something really stupid. Weiland will struggle to do as well as he did against Thune in 1996.