Shizzle & Krusty
Local Rapper and Producer, Gabe Nightshield made these stickers.

Local Rapper and Producer, Gabe Nightshield made these stickers.
In Politics: South Dakota: The South Dakota Democratic Party (SDDP) sent out a fundraising appeal touting a 2500 increase in Democratic voter registration before last November’s general election. The one positive aspect of this PR spin is that SDDP’s leadership agrees that voter registration numbers are a good measure of the health of the Democratic Party here. Their self-congratulations led me to update the spreadsheet detailing the SD Secretary of State’s statewide voter registration statistics. Neither the long term nor the short term trends are as positive as the SDDP wants you to believe. (In their defense they are just trying to get you to give them your money and are in their salesman mode.)
Here are the facts as presented in the spreadsheet above: Since its height in 2008, Democratic Party voter registration has declined from 39% to 23% of South Dakota’s electorate. (From 204,413 to 145,420) Meanwhile, Republican Party voter registration has increased from 46% to 51% of registered voters. (From 241,101 to 321,598) And, as to the claim the SDDP made that it is turning things around ( ie. the 2500 new voter claim), the opposite is true. Since last November’s election, Democratic voter registration declined by 784 voters while Republican registration increased by 3175 registrants. A little more honesty and a little less PR spin might help the SDDP confront the fact that, despite the multitude of undemocratic and despotic acts of Donald Trump in the last 4 months, people are still not buying what the SDDP is selling.
But then maybe that is the whole point. Perhaps the SDDP’s leadership is not into winning so much as to maintaining its control of their smaller and smaller organization and its ideological purity.
I need a drink.
Oh! And by the way, for whom would you vote in the US Senate election next year, if your choices were, Republican Mike Rounds, Independent Brian Bengs or Democrat Julian Beaudion? Inquiring minds would like to know.
Oh, the political games played on such an unsubstantial level. The other night the city council elected their chairs. Usually I chide a few councilors into nominating someone (they never pick the person but this time I stayed out of it, I guess I wanted to be surprised. Councilor Merkouris was promoted to Chair, which was no surprise, and Barranco kept his Auditor Chair title. Sigette was nominated as Vice-Chair. While I was a little surprised, I was also NOT. She has shown she wants to dig in, so that’s good. But she seemed surprised to accept the nomination. I asked a councilor afterwards, did she know in advance? They said, YES. This is SOP with the city council. They usually play games behind the scenes trying to get the person nailed down on voting night so they are not surprised or embarrassed. So how do I think this played out? I’m not sure, so I am going to take an educated guess; When Rich and Curt set out to find their candidate I am sure they reached out to all the councilors asking who would be interested. My guess is Thomason probably said he would like to do it, because I know he has mentioned it to me in the past. Then in comes the COS Beck and the Mayor’s office encouraging a female councilor. My guess is that all three of them turned it down. Miranda probably turned it down because of work commitments, Cole is not running for a 2nd term, and Sigette may have considered but also worried she wasn’t experienced enough. So what happened between the time Thomason probably told leadership he was interested and the moment Sigette was convinced to take the job? Not sure, but now the Mayor’s office is apparently playing games with the council’s leadership picks. tsk. tsk. But that’s just WILD SPECULATION on my part
When I first saw that Smith was a possible candidate for mayor in a recent news article, I just chuckled and wondered who was concocting this story. Sources told me at the time that Smith was NOT considering a run and even blew off speculation. Until recently. The Dems were successful in getting Duffy elected to the school board, even though that was NOT a heavy lift, so I think they want to try their hands at a mayoral race. I welcome it if it is true. Sources tell me Smith plans to announce next week at a staged event in Downtown Sioux Falls. We will see. I have had only two candidates confirm to me they are indeed running but don’t have a launch date, but I would assume IF Jamie announces next week the dominoes will begin to fall.
CAN THE COUNCIL LEGALLY DETERMINE THE DATE OF THE NEXT ELECTION?
The council is tasked with determining if our municipal elections will be in June or November of next year. I lean towards November, but only two councilors currently support that idea, so our elections will likely be in June. But can the council determine this? Some are saying since there needs to be a change in charter, that change should be determined by voters in a special election. In other words the city council should be calling a special election BEFORE January 1st allowing the citizens to make the determination. I will let the lawyers hash it out, but like the pool bonds, I would just let the citizens decide and wash your hands of it instead of all the hand wringing. This is a decision that will likely hold for years, so you best make the right one.
Last Tuesday the City Council got a presentation on RFP’s vs. Negotiated Sale. The topic came up because a negotiated sale is what the city is apparently still in the process of negotiating with the developer, Christensen, for the proposed development behind 8th and Railroad. I find this a little alarming. Back in June of last year the council got a presentation on the development. The developer told the council then that they planned to break ground in the Fall of last year or Spring of this year, now the planning department says it is is still in the ‘negotiating stage’. How can you be in the negotiating stage when the Planning Commission approved the TIF last July? Now there was a statement made by the proposed developer in June when they made their initial presentation; they said they would coordinate their build out with how fast the properties at the Steel District and more specifically Cherapa II would lease out. One wonders if those properties are having trouble being leased, and coincidentally slowing investment in the Christensen development? But we know how these games are being played in town. Years ago a franchise motorcycle repair shop tried to come to town and a major competitor with their wrench in city government convinced banks and other investors to back away from this franchise essentially shutting them down before the doors even opened. Funny how a TIF gets approved before a land purchase is even signed. We got some real clowns running the city these days . . .
SPEAKING OF A CIRCUS
There has been a lot of talk lately between constituents about how light and meaningless the city council agenda has been lately. The story is the lame duck mayor is telling council no new policy initiatives will be allowed on the agenda. I told someone, “The only reason you would shut down the only function of your policy body is because you have someone bigger then you riding your ass.” More to come on this.
UPDATE: Mike Zitterich sent me this;
I wanted to see how many ordinances and resolutions that get posted to the City Council Agenda by the mayor or city councilors, and in 2024, here is what I came up with:
Out of 354 Ordinances/Resolutions sponsored from January 1, 2024 to December 30, 2024 —
Mayor………………………….183……52%……………………5.1 Per meeting
Private Applicants…………..97……27%……………………2.7 Per meeting
City Councilors………………74……21%……………………2.1 Per meeting
36 Meetings in 2024
HIGH:
Mayor sponsored 13 total on August 13, 2024
City Council sponsored 9 twice on May 14th and May 7th of 2024
Private Applicants sponsored 8 total 3 times during the 2024 season.