A South Dacola Foot Soldier sent me this today;

I just got a call from a polling firm based out of N Sioux City SD (based on my caller ID).  It asked if I would support Noem or one of the following Dem opponents, either Sutton, Huether, or Seiler.

I had heard about a week ago that there was going to be polling out there in an effort to push Sutton into the race. But what I find interesting is they would include someone who I thought was now a registered Indy (MMM) and someone who lost to Rumblestrips. While they were at it, why didn’t they also mention Michelle Erpenbach 🙁

Well isn’t that the $64 thousand dollar question?

The rumor mill going around is that Billie is being actively recruited.

Is this bad? No, and while I prefer a candidate that isn’t Republican Light, he is the only Democrat in the state with enough clout to challenge her, especially if he gets the National Party behind him.

Noem is beatable, but you have to convice the indies and moderate Republicans in the state who haven’t been happy with the crazy Trump train she has been driving.

Hopefully if Sutton is running he will announce ASAP. There is NO time to waste.

I got word this week about a special project some young Dem leaders are working on in SD;

In one post-election pitch, Sutton wrote that he wasn’t just building a campaign, but a movement that will “keep going and keep fighting for our shared priorities.” Sutton tells The Associated Press that he doesn’t have plans right now to run for anything else, but he says to expect to hear more from him in coming months.

All I have been told is that Billie is just one cog in the wheel and the project is pretty major. Sorry, I wish I had more.

I guess we will just have to wait and see.

In this story, Sutton pretty much sums up NOEM’s climb of nothingness;

It also helps that he’s a young politician who has stayed in South Dakota while his opponent is a congresswoman who has spent the last seven years casting votes in Congress ― a body that is not popular in any state. He has hammered Noem as an ambitious Washington insider who is running a campaign with money that she transferred from her federal campaign account. This was a practice that was banned in the referendum passed by voters in 2016 and reversed by the Republican Legislature almost immediately after.

“She’s just been climbing the ladder, one elected office at a time,” Sutton said.

She also has been pretty good at wearing trucker hats.

While I felt last week that Sutton didn’t have a chance, some things happened this past week which have me believe at this point the race is a tie. If the election were held today I think either one could win by just a few hundred votes.

I have felt that Billie needed certain stars to align in order to win this, here are some important factors;

• Mason Dixon poll puts them at a tie

• Many internal democratic polls and some unscientific online polls have Sutton ahead by 2-5 points

• Voter turnout is predicted at 50%, this helps to close the Dem/Rep voter gap

• Sutton has wide support amongst his party’s voters, Noem, not so much

• Some voters don’t want a woman as governor, and while that doesn’t mean they will vote for Sutton, they may leave it blank

• I think Sutton appeals to indy’s more than Noem, because Noem is taking a hard right conservative approach to the campaign

• Noem’s negative campaigning is NOT working because it is painfully false, unlike her ads against Jackley which were true. This postcard below if further proof of the gutter politics the SD GOP plays, which just piss off voters more than anything. It would be different if Sutton was being negative to, but all he does is show Noem’s true record of nothingness.

• Trump’s rating is way down at 49% in SD. This doesn’t bode well for a Washington Republican like Noem

• Billie performed very well in the last debate, even at one point laughing at Noem’s ridiculous claims about Bernie Sanders.

• Kristi can’t swim (well this isn’t a bad thing, I can’t either).

This is anyone’s game at this point. This next week will be crucial to both campaigns to sway those last handful of undecided.

UPDATE: I found this endorsement ad interesting. Besides the fact that it is very generic and you can tell that Dennis doesn’t really know diddle about Kristi except that she is a fellow Republican (He should have just said that, “Vote for Kristi, because she is a Republican like me”), I found it interesting they would film the commercial in a high rise office in Sioux Falls. If you were the current sitting governor and you were endorsing a governor candidate, wouldn’t you have filmed this commercial at the Capital or at least in front of the Capital instead of in an office building in Sioux Falls? FAIL.