As our COVID cases continue to go through the roof, and Governor Noem is busy serving Dear Leader as she campaigns for the President*’s re-elect with Cory Lewandowski. She’s in New Hamphire — no doubt preparing for a soon-to-be laughable 2024 Presidential run.
And, we are facing another two-year period of, let’s say, insufficient, legislative sessions that will do nothing to correct this asleep-at-the-switch Executive. With the new Supreme Court team, I expect a lot of forced birth and anti-equality legislation in 2021-22. Ugh.
Case in point of what our Legislative races are like: our nearby District 35 has four candidates. Guess which ones are R incumbents likely to cruise to easy re-election (answers here, as if you need them):
- An experienced social worker who graduated from SDSU and knows the real issues of people living in her district to economically and culturally survive
- A former Army paratrooper who is a local web developer (also an SDSU graduate) who believes we should take the Medicare expansion to help our health and economy.
- A former itinerant karaoke DJ whose main platform is all about God and guns, and of course, low taxes (for people with money, taxes are for poor people; we love our sales tax! On food too!
- An electrical contractor but, mostly, professional Christian who annually puts up anti-gay bills that are dismissed because, well, they are on their face unconstitutional.
It sure would be great if District 35 would finally send someone to Pierre that is actually qualified to serve. I am not holding my breath.
A little context , we have not had a Democratic governor in 40 years and the both houses have been in Republican hands for more than 30. In the 25 years I have been here, we have lost ground every cycle, so now we only have a handful of D state legislators (we are horrifically gerrymandered). Republican voter registration advantage has increased since 2016. To pile on, it turns out more asshats from around the country are moving here because they love our Governor’s terrible lying response to COVID-19 and our regressive taxation so much.
It’s just bad, and getting worse.