Ellis writes his column today about the SOS’s office and their recent stumblings;
Jason Gant, the South Dakota secretary of state, hasn’t been living a care-free, happy-go-lucky summer.
Gant is the subject of much talk these days in political circles and the Internet, mostly of the undesirable kind. His latest problem came to light after Scott Ehrisman, a local blogger who runs Southdacola.com, found that Gant’s deputy, Pat Powers, was moonlighting on the side by operating a political merchandising firm, doing mailings and printing on behalf of candidates.
To some, it’s not a big deal. So what if a guy — Powers — has a second business?
To tell you the truth, when I first posted about it, I didn’t think much of it either. I knew when Pat was running DWC that he had the business, so, I just assumed he stopped doing it when he started working for the SOS, even if the site was still up. I assumed wrong. It wasn’t like this site was just ‘floating’ out there. Powers was selling campaign material to a candidate his boss endorsed. (he lost BTW). But that was only half of an evolving story. The Senator that filed the complaint against Gant’s office added this tidbit recently over on Madville Times;
What is this new discussion of the “Gant Group,?†What is meant by changing the address and rewriting the “documentary timeline for Jason Gant’s private consulting business, the Gant Group.â€
Since when does the Secretary of State or for that matter any Constitutional Officer have a “PRIVATE†consulting business? Explain how a full time State employee could be shameless enough to discuss adjusting his own private business from a State Constitutional office!!
I will have some interesting data and questions to submit to the Attorney General in connection with my requested investigation next week.
State Senator Stanford Adelstein
As another commenter added, it is time to go National with this story. NPR, are you listening?
UPDATE: I found Gant as chair to this PAC an interesting conflict of interest. I guess the Dems tried to make hay about this last year but nobody was listening. Maybe now is the time to get out the bailer twine. (I took a screenshot just in case the link plays musical chairs on us.)
The first time I have read an Ellis story where I can say he’s getting the issue.
L3wis where is the. SD Dem party? What is ben afraid of?
What does the Gant Group do? Rate buffets?
Governor Daugaard should just make an emergency exception for this kind of behavior.
I don’t know what Party Central is thinking, but to some extent, this story is driving itself pretty well without the Dems having to invest their political capital in it. Gant isn’t on the ballot this year, so the party doesn’t have as much motivation to attack him as to focus on getting votes for Varilek, McGovern, Nemec, and Legislative candidates. I do agree that individual legislative candidates can use the Gant issue alongside other issues to tell an overarching narrative of GOP one-party hubris and the need to check the power by electing Dems.
Besides, Chairman Nesselhuf may not want to foul the story with either a partisan hue or with a hint of personal sour grapes. Remember, he lost to Gant 60-40 in 2010. Nesselhuf making noise, even if it is righteous “I told you so!” noise, could interfere with the main message, which right now is being amplified ably by Republican Senator Adelstein.
Hey L3wis-
What will you do if Gant drives out here wanting to talk to you about this whole big misunderstanding?
Ellis puts an enamel gloss over some reasons that Powers created so much hostility. Ellils says it was because he was critical and snarky. He leaves out the fact that he published absolute libels, which he quickly erased when someone challenged them, and that the last months Powers operated the blog–openly–was a flurry of such activity. Some people affected by Powers’ defamation looked into court action, but found he did not have anything to sue over. Which gets into another aspect. Has anyone actually looked into how successful his campaign store and real estate business actually were? Or where the money was actually coming from that kept his little enterprises going? Or with all his business activity, how he found the immense amount of time to operate his blog and install the cookies through which he tracked his visitors and commenters–a bit of knowledge he has applied to the SOS site.
Remember that the blog that helped take Daschle down was financed by the Thune campaign. From the offices of SDSU. In Brookings.
Ellis also claims that the drastic change of regime in the SOS office was because Gant interviewed the employees about the changes he wanted to make in the office and many fled in fright. That certainly is not the story told by those who left.
There are a lot of people out there who know things about Powers and Gant who have never been asked. With the South Dakota press, it is not likely they ever will be.
What Gant did with his office is exactly what the Bush administration did with the Secretary of State’s office when they took over in 2001. Tons of able employees who had worked for decades (and both parties) were purged or left on their own accord because they weren’t 100% in lockstep with Cheney and his flacks. I’m sure this is the playbook Gant brought in.
“What will you do if Gant drives out here wanting to talk to you about this whole big misunderstanding?”
The same thing Stan did.
I’d waste his time for a while. Nothing wrong with a cup of coffee.
The only problem with that is that it is my time, not his.
This is a mess!
Everyone seems to have forgotten how Jon Lauck used a blog to advance his career just like Pat Powers. Lauck did his blogging as a professor if I’m not mistaken and he also did it for a US Senate candidate. Lauck did his blogging on the public dime and PP did his before going on the public dime.
I don’t see anything wrong with blogging. Blogging is not the problem.
That is where Ellis lost me in his column but overall it was a good post and I thought actually quite generous to Gant.
If Cory H were to run for office or get hired by the next Democratic Governor/Senator of SD I wouldn’t have a problem with that happening. But I bet he would be a big target for conservatives to go after just like PP.
Now that said the campaign store was out of line and so were the endorsements and the other mistakes Ellis mentioned in the column. – those are what’s hurting Gant and unfortunately for Gant PP isn’t the problem it’s Gant.
13wis: Point taken. But I would enjoy seeing what his mood is like at this moment. We haven’t seen anyone get in this kind of a political mess in my memory.
Oh, the irony – from the archives of Gant’s 2010 campaign. Too bad he doesn’t take his own advice!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbClLPQSG_A
Trust, me, I have gone after Lauck about his boloney. I got a good piling on about ‘libel’ etc.
The only problem is that Lauck is a Federal employee who works for Thune and ME!!!!!
These kidders have been pulling this shit off for years, time for them to get out their shovels.
LC- Love that commercial, the ‘fake’ issue that Pitty Patt and Gunt cooked up, probably in that chicken coop behind them in the commercial.