Category Archives: Secretary Of State

‘Guest Poster’ contributed;

Mama Mia our intrepid SOS Gant is busy guy. When does he have time to actually be a Secretary of State? The guy is like a big bowl of spaghetti with him the big meatball. How many Political Action Committees does one candidate need, to funnel money into his own campaign and a few special friends? As we discussed yesterday, Dusty Johnson appears to have only his campaign committee but Jason has had so many. It can be confusing. Jason, has it been your intention to keep everyone from knowing what you were up to all along?

A Note from our search committee: Everyone should understand a few details when you are curious about who is who, in South Dakota money games. The SOS website is a fountain of information if you really want to find something.  It was poorly built from the beginning to confuse. With the assistance of his past web guru PP, it is still a mess, but of a different order.  It appears to have been intentionally setup to keep the loose ends from ever coming together. SD campaign finance and reporting laws appear to be almost nonexistent and also what there is, are easily manipulated.

But back to our story… Let’s see, since 2004 Jason has had his original Gant for Senate campaign. Then to funnel more money, he set up the SD Senate Republican Campaign Committee to help out of state ALEC donors. Now we find the during first month in the SOSoffice in 2011, he setup the Committed to Victory PAC to receive money from organizations like ES&S (Vote tabulation machine company) and a Pierre based SOS / GOP website developer operator, BPRO, Inc. (scroll down to State/City/government)

ENTIRE DOCUMENTS OF GANT’S VARIOUS COMMITTEES; GANT-Committees

Another interesting part of this we are looking into, are the ways money flows back and forth between certain campaigns.  What are they doing? The links between Gant’s PAC activity and so much more is taking us deeper into the Spaghetti Monster’s kitchen.

Stay tuned, this is just the tip of the iceberg ….

OTHER GOODIES, Here is a proposal BPRO prepared for the state.

South DaCola is researching ALEC past and present members in our state’s political and non-political offices. It has been interesting dig so far but I could use your help (I have already gathered several financial reports, post update coming soon).  It would make the job easier if we could secure any lists of past membership, let’s say from 2000 to now.  So if you are in possession of any old lists I sure would like to have a copy. You can send it anonymously to me, if you choose to.

It would be appreciated.

UPDATE: What year did SOS campaign reports start?  We can only find some campaign reports for 2002 and before, for example Kristi Fiegen’s 1995-2001 are not to be found.

“I’m outta here!”

While the departure yesterday was a bit suspicious, what made it even more suspicious was his interim replacement was hired almost simultaneously;

Elections Director Aaron Lorenzen resigned early Wednesday to pursue a job in the private sector, Gant said, but he did not offer further details. Gant hired Lorenzen in January 2011.

“He decided this morning to accept a new venture outside of state government,” Gant said.

Wasting no time, Gant hired former five-term retired Minnehaha County Auditor Sue Roust to serve as interim elections director through the November general election.

So let me get this straight, your election supervisor quits and you hire his replacement within a matter of hours? One can only wonder if his departure was in the making for awhile. I hardly doubt that Roust made the decision to fill in as interim supervisor from a single phone call from Gant. This decision had to have been in the making for awhile, but not according to Gant;

Gant told me today that he only found out about Lorenzen’s departure yesterday morning. By the end of the day he’d persuaded Roust — who’s on vacation — to agree to serve as interim through the election.

Makes you wonder if it stems from this comment left on a thread I posted about Lorenzen in July;

I know for a fact (aka direct knowledge) that Aaron does his job much better and with more integrity than that of Gant and PP. He takes his job seriously and loves what he does. The games that Gant and PP partake in Aaron disagrees with 99% of them.

To be honest, Aaron doesn’t have much of a say when he comes up with an idea. Gant and PP (especially PP) shoot down all recommendations that come into their office from fellow employees. Aaron and the rest of the staff wished none of the new electronic additions (Campaign Finance, Lobbyist, etc) would have gone live until 100% satisfied internally with the system. Gant and PP just wanted to push it and push it even if it’s a garbage system (which it is). Next be on the lookout for the new electronic filing system that business services is pushing. Trust me, it’s a great system once it works, but like the other systems, they will go live way too soon with too many defects.

I hate the fact his name got brought into something that he had no control over. Gant vetoes any and every idea that didn’t originate from PP. Maybe now that PP is gone, things will be for the better. One can hope.

Could this comment by one of Lorenzen’s ‘friends’ cost him his job? You know how these things work in government,

“You can either resign, or we will fire you and that could be very, very messy. Hey buddy, take one for the team like Pat did.”

This situation is getting stinkier by the day. If anyone has the real story, I would love to hear it.

Besides the breaking story of Pat Miller taking over for Pat Powers in the SOS’s office (Governor Miller’s 2nd wife), he also hired former Minnehaha county auditor Sue Roust as a temp employee. Stay tuned.