This is a story of a first-time candidate, how she got there, and how a meeting with her Republican incumbent opponent reminded her why she's doing this.
My dear spouse, Bethany Wojahn, somehow was talked into the race as a place-holder for the primary in April to make sure there was a full Democratic ticket in District 32 here in Rapid City, South Dakota. But she jumped in for real after a local school funding crisis came to a head. Our local "paper of record," the Rapid City Journal, for some reason, blames everyone but the State Legislature. Our schools get the lowest per-student funding from the State in the nation. Fiftieth. (Lower than that if you include possessions!) We are fiftieth in teacher salaries as well.
So here we are in the throes of our first legislative campaign. Bethany, as a candidate advocating for children, showed up at a nationally-sponsored forum called Step Up For Children. The subject of support of pre-school programs by state regulation and funding came up. I'll let the Rapid City Journal take it from here:
[Republican State House incumbent Brian] Gosch said he hadn't noticed any educational advantages enjoyed by his two children who attended preschool and the two who stayed at home in the care of a parent. Wojahn said she was happy for Gosch's children, but pointed out that not all families have the luxury of making that choice.
Bethany talked about how not so long ago she had been a single mom in very tough economic circumstances, and that although thankfully that difficult stretch was over, she would never forget that as a person (or a legislator):
"I've had to choose between buying medications and peanut butter, and that is an awful place to be," she said, calling for greater investment in early education programs.
The next day, at Western Dakota Tech's Constitution Day festivities, an event that brought us yet a few more voter registrations (Dems are out-pacing Republicans in new registrations nine-to-one in South Dakota this year!)...
Gosch walks up to Bethany and says... "Gee, I was thinking it would have been appropriate to bring you a jar of peanut butter today."
That's right, he thought that was funny.
Talk about someone that doesn't have any understanding of what it's like for families to struggle to get by. It's clear that he has never had to make those tough choices. Gosch is closely allied with "100 percent pro-life" Senate candidate Elli Schwiesow, who caused an awkward silence in the room at a recent forum (same day as Step Up For Kids, actually) when she was asked about how to bring prosperity to our region said that she felt that we were very prosperous here in Western South Dakota. This is true only if you find the lower income and the simply desperate folk among us invisible. Rapid City has a huge economic divide. Some of the most economically challenged areas of Indian Country in the nation are right down the road, and the Black Hills' major industry, tourism, is a big job generator—of minimum-wage jobs, that is.
The point about our friend Brian's attempt at a joke with Bethany is that, to people like him that poverty is simply off the radar, as Obama said at Invesco about McCain:
"It's not because John McCain doesn't care; it's because John McCain doesn't get it."
Gosch has no idea how much good preschool means to working moms and dads.
This is not an academic discussion here, as Census data show that South Dakota leads the Nation in percentage of young children with both parents in the work force (74 percent). But pre-K regulation is seen at best anti-childcare business owners and ant worst Stalinist. No, I'm not kidding, I know those that think that!
Bethany is in this House race because she has had it with people looking the other way, and believes strongly that our State Legislature's priorities are way out of whack. We have more than $800 million in investments designated for educational enhancement, but the majority Republicans in our Legislature refuse to even use the interest, and would rather invest in Wall Street than in our kids. Maybe they think they don't deserve it? (I wonder how that's going this fall.)
One of Bethany's talking points is:
Politicians habitually say that children are the future of South Dakota, but that view has great shortcomings. Our children do not merely inhabit the future. They are here now. They are part of South Dakota now. They go to school here, they participate in the arts here, they go hunting and fishing with their parents here, they enjoy the beautiful Black Hills, and they depend on adults to pave the way for them. However, on many levels, we are failing our kids in the here and now, and that must change.
She wants to continue to keep serving it up to her Republican opponents. If we are successful, we could have the first Democratic sweep (our incumbent Dem Senator, Tom Katus, former school board member and Lt Gov. Candidate Eric Abrahamson, and Bethany) since. . . I don't know if it's ever been done, frankly.
Anyway we're pretty thrilled to finally have the opportunity to turn things around in our state, which has been suffering under one-party rule for years.
It's pretty exciting to be part of it.