‘The Antidote’ sums up Gant-Gate perfectly

Political Appointee PAT POWERS RESIGNS

Former fringe blogger Pat Powers, who was hired by Secretary of State Jason Gant to be the office’s Director of Operations has resigned amid a scandal that saw him conducting political business on the side while ostensibly remaining politically neutral in his $65,000 taxpayer funded day job in Pierre.

The resignation comes on the heels of a request by Republican state Sen. Stan Adelstein of Rapid City that Attorney General Marty Jackley investigate Powers’ outside political business interests for conflicts with his duties in the Secretary of State’s office. Adelstein feared that Gant and Powers were politicizing this most apolitical office which legally must be politically neutral in that its main function is to oversee elections in South Dakota in a nonpartisan fashion.

Powers often personal and vindictive postings on his blog, South Dakota War College, were legendary in their vitriol and too often questionable in their accuracy.

It should come as no surprise that Powers would be accused of politicizing the Office of Secretary of State. Gant himself has regularly been questioned for his politicizing the office literally from the day of his election to it in November 2010. Since then, Gant has come under fire for not only hiring the politically radioactive Powers, but for continuing to maintain a Political Action Committee after his election to the SOS’s office whose Statement of Purpose and Goals as filed by Gant reads, “To elect Republican candidates.”

Further, we at The Antidote believed that Gant was violating federal law earlier this year when he refused to spend federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) funds to provide equal days of early voting for Native Americans on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation compared to the number of early voting days in “white” counties. Congress in 2002 passed the Help America Vote Act precisely to provide money to states to eliminate problems such as the early voting funding issues which were occurring on Pine Ridge. Yet Gant did nothing until a federal judge forced him to provide an equal number of early voting days to the Pine Ridge.

Finally, we believe Gant violated state law when he employed a double standard in that he was denying Democratic candidates for office ballot access for petition violations while he ignored the same petition violations for Republican candidates for office.

At the time Secretary-elect Gant appointed Powers, we at The Antidote warned, “Powers had been the acerbic, biased, inflammatory voice of the blog, South Dakota War College – perhaps the most petty, biased, and least prone to facts and truth of any blog in South Dakota…to move this ideologue into the Secretary of State’s office is a very dangerous move indeed.”

Then, two weeks ago in our June 26th edition, “One Party Government Run Amok” we wrote, “The overwhelming body of evidence of Gant’s politicization of the office of Secretary of State has become an embarrassment to our great State. His actions have more than tainted his office and his reputation. His growing number of questionable actions and decisions has put the state in a myriad of legal and costly quagmires. We agree with Senator Adelstein that it is time for Gant’s staff to be investigated and indeed believe it is past time for Pat Powers to be removed from the Secretary of State’s staff. We would, however, expand that investigation to include Gant himself. The long history of a nonpartisan office of the Secretary of State in South Dakota is too sacred to allow Gant’s questionable actions and decisions to continue.”

We weren’t alone in that thought. Following Powers’ resignation last Friday, JC Murphy wrote on a Rapid City Journal blog, “Gant has been playing fast and loose with the rules in his office from Day One. The Secretary of State’s office must be run tight, fair and with integrity. New stories come up almost daily and his vague, ‘everything is just fine’ responses do not suffice. Every board that he reports to, every legislator with oversight responsibility, and each and every citizen should be alarmed. The Attorney General must complete a thorough and consequential evaluation of the operations of this sensitive office. The GOP ‘leadership ladder’ is quick to circle the wagons, protect their own, and hope that the public won’t find out or won’t care. The GOP AG investigating the GOP SOS about favoritism for the presumed GOP Speaker of the House…all ultimately reporting to judges appointed by a GOP governor. If the public doesn’t step in and bring new leadership to Pierre, I guess it’s true: we get the (corrupt) government we deserve (elect).”

In another blog post on the Journal’s Mount Blogmore, former Republican state legislator Don Frankenfeld said of Gant,

“He strikes me as a political thug, and not a very smart one either. Guys like this belong in Boston maybe, or Chicago. In South Dakota we are entitled to hold our elected officials to a higher standard. Gant should resign. Barring that, he should be impeached.”

JC Murphy could not be more correct. Pat Powers’ resignation, albeit under fire, is at least a step in the right direction and Don Frankenfeld’s description of Gant appears to have hit the bulls’ eye.