Here are some updates on how the 2008 South Dakota Senate race is shaping up. I plan on keeping dailykos updated on the important race because its from my homestate and I will be blogging about it as president of my local College Democrats chapter.
Cross-posted at usddems.
My deepest gratitude to jonah in nyc for their diary "How to be an amateur blogger" which helped me to setup an RSS feed for South Dakota politics. That diary can be found here.
State Senator Joel Dykstra from Canton announced yesterday that he is planning to run in the GOP primary to challenge Johnson for his seat. Dykstra is joined by Sam Kephart who announced his intentions in May to seek the seat. Kephart is a lawyer from Spearfish. I haven't researched any dirt on these two candidates yet but will be fishing for it and gladly report it as I discover it.
Senator Johnson made news this morning as well for some encouraging online donation numbers. ActBlue.com has raised over $100,000 for Tim Johnson from online donors. That is more than any other politician except presidential candidate John Edwards who took in over $800,000.
Tim Johnson has not announced his intentions on whether he will run or not leading to all sorts of speculation. Johnson of course suffered from a brain hemmorage earlier this year although his doctors say he is doing great. According to his press secretary he is anxious to get back to work.
The potential for Johnson to back out of the race is probably encouraging Republican interest in his seat because an open Senate seat will be much easier to win than one held by an incumbent in what is sure to be a good year for Democrats. Max Wetz, executive director of the state Republican party, said that several other Republicans in the state are contemplating a run for the seat as well so they may have several candidates to choose from in the primary.
***Question: I cross-posted this at my local blog as well but the blog for my university auto-populates with my real name. Would you more experienced bloggers recommend that I paste a link for this blog or should I abstain? I just don't know if its safe to reveal my identity to anyone on dailykos who has the desire to look for it.***