State of the South Dakota Democratic Party
First, for the good news -
As you know, Ben Nesselhuf easily defeated Jerad Higman in his re-election campaign, proving that District 17 is one of the finest and most progressive districts in all of South Dakota. Aside from that, we also picked up 4 house seats overall in the state legislature. I believe this gives us a total of 4.
Unfortunately, it's not all pies and roses as the South Dakota Democrats, during an election cycle where the Republican brand was seemingly damaged everywhere, managed to lose a Senate seat in the state legislature. This seems almost incomprehensible. Yes, I understand that the presence of an abortion initiative (yet again) probably drove more conservatives in the polls, and I understand that the State Dems trail the Republicans in both fundraising and tradition, but that cannot be the sole reason for the continued inability of SD Democrats to mount a significant opposition.
There must be a re-evaluation of how things are done here, because it seems to me that our fund allocation was both poor and short-sighted during the course of thsi election. South Dakota is becoming purple on a national level, there's no reason for the Democrats to fail so consistently and so massively on the State level anymore.