South Dakota Democrats need to shape up before they all ship out

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This was sent to me by a SD Dem;

Just looked at the SOS statewide voter registration stats as of Nov 2. Democrats are now down to 170,000 from 176,000 a year ago and 204,000 as of 2008 General. Republicans remain around 240,000 and Independents up to 109,000.

The only positive about all this is that it appears the Dems are losing voters to the independents and NOT the Republicans.

SD Democratic Party ED confirms it, Elvis has left the building

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Wow, I am starting to sound like Pitty Patt more every day, God help me! I got word last week that besides the Chair of the party, there was only one other volunteer at the party office, and only one paid staff, the new ED, Suzie Jones Pranger. The other two paid staffers have left, Pranger confirms it in an email today;

Hello! I am Suzanne Jones Pranger, the new Executive Director of the South Dakota Democratic Party. As we continue to gear up for the 2016 Election, we need your help! The Party is looking to hire two new staff members to help propel us to success on Election Day, but we cannot do this without your support.

The South Dakota Democratic Party is hiring a new Field and Data Director and is planning to expand our staff with the addition of a Communications Director who will interact with the press, produce daily content on social media, spread the Democratic message, and help our candidates win in 2016!
I’m still puzzled how the SD Democratic party is going to rebuild itself with two volunteers and a newly hired Executive Director (who because of her previous Federal job wasn’t involved in the party much over the past couple of years). I will say this, Pranger has a good resume, and Tornberg is a fighter, but you don’t fight a forest fire with 1-gallon pail of water. If there are any Democrats in the state still loyal to the party’s mission, I suggest they join in the fight.
And I am talking about seasoned Democrats, not recent college grads that hop around from job to job to build their resume instead of building the credibility of the party. That has where I have seen the SD Democratic party crumble over the past 5-10 years, paying greenhorns to do the jobs of seasoned politicos, and not making them accountable for their poor results. I would suggest from now on you offer them volunteer positions to prove themselves first before putting them on the payroll.
I’m afraid that 2016 is going to be another disappointing year for the Dems unless they build the party first, from inside out, and stop worrying about petitions and Facebook games.

So what’s the connection between Sioux Falls Democratic Mayor Huether and a voting rights lawsuit in Jackson County?

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We will get to that in a moment, but a little background;

Jackson County is spending one and a half million of your tax dollars (not their local dollars, but yours, South Dakotans!) to keep Lakota people in Wanblee and other Indian communities from enjoying similar access to early voting as white folks near Kadoka enjoy. Dennis Olson, chairman of the South Dakota Public Assurance Alliance that is footing the bill for Jackson County’s racist resistance, calls the Lakota lawsuit for a satellite early voting center “frivolous” and “just one of those things you have to put up with.”

Don’t tell O.J. Semans that fighting for Indian voting rights is frivolous. Semans, the executive director of Indian voting rights advocacy group Four Directions, takes issue with Olson’s seeming disdain for Indian voting rights

See, they are taking this lawsuit money from the Assurance Alliance (Sioux Falls taxpayers are the biggest contributors to their funds) to fight giving voters in Jackson County around $20K in HAVA funds that already are sitting in an account at the SOS office. Sounds pretty idiotic? Right? Unless of course you are someone who doesn’t like Native Americans and don’t think they should vote, you know like a lot of those West River Teabagging Republicans. So you ask ‘where does a good Democrat like Mayor Huether fit in to this picture?’ You would think as an upstanding member of his party he would put his foot down and tell the SD Public Assurance Alliance to drop the suit because Democrats across the state believe in voter equality. But I’m sure you are asking, why would the SDPAA listen to him? Gee, I don’t know, because he appointed two of the Board Members to the Alliance; Mike Hall, Director of Risk Management for the City of Sioux Falls and Secretary of the Alliance and Tracy Turbak, Director of Finance for the City of Sioux Falls. The mayor has a little (a lot) pull in these matters.

Some may say, “Well maybe the mayor has tried to intervene, or at least try to get his appointments to intervene.” I don’t know. Maybe he has, but it doesn’t seem he has been to successful if that was the case. Then there was a certain ‘incident’.

See, when this all started, O.J. Semans asked to have a meeting with the mayor to discuss the case and to see if the mayor would speak with the Alliance about dropping this silliness. After not being able to get an appointment, O.J. did what every good determined person does when dealing with government officials, he showed up in person to the mayor’s office asking to have a few minutes with the mayor, assuming of course he knew why O.J. was there. Seems like a pretty big deal? Right? Why wouldn’t the mayor just hear him out for at least 5 minutes? After a back and forth with the Mayor’s secretary, O.J. was still refused the meeting. So back to square one.

So apparently our good (Democratic) mayor thinks it is more ‘prudent’ to blow $1.5 million of tax dollars on a frivolous lawsuit they will lose then to give already set aside Federal dollars to a couple of satellite voting sites in Indian Country.

The West River Teabaggers are either elated or really confused.

What will the NEW Executive Director of the SDDP do to build the party?

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Besides being unimpressed listening to Suzie Jones Pranger tell us about her resume for 20 minutes at last Friday’s Democratic Forum (her resume is impressive, her speaking and presentation skills are not) She was taken off guard when she was asked very simple questions. I’ll defend her on one front, she had only been on the job for 5 days and probably should not have been thrown into a presentation like this so soon, and the party chair, Ann Tornberg did eventually bail her out.

I wanted to ask Suzie what she would do to get more registered Democrats. James Abourezk beat me to the punch. After himming and hawing for a moment, and pausing, Jim asked again. Suzie said she was going to “pull old lists and start contacting those people” then rambled about Gregory County or something. I left early.

Like I said before, in all fairness, she has only been on the job for 5 days, but she better start educating herself real quick on the reality of party building, because if the Dems continue to lose members at the rate they have been, there may not be a party in SD in a few years.