January 17 roundup follow up.A clarification from the fieldAnd an upcoming project

Now from the right side of the state (If you're looking down from North Dakota)

More unannounced candidates. According to the Pennington County Auditor, 3 new souls have petitions out in Rapid City. Dennis Schmidt picked up a petition as a Republican for District 33 Senate. (Does J.P. Duniphan know this?)

Also - 2 Republican petitions are out for the District 35 House race for the seat vacated by Alice McCoy who is leaving because of term limits to take on Senator Napoli. Mark Kirkeby and Lyle Hendrickson are both circulating a petition for the House. With Kirkeby's name ID, he might just be an early favorite.

Welcome to the game, guys.


Clarifications from the home office

Amanda Dodson from the South Dakota GOP staff writes in with a clarification to a couple of the comments I had made in my earlier post.

Just wanted to let you know the SDGOP has not had a legislative director/liaison for over 5 years. The state Party has however had a full time political director for the past 5 years. It was Hugh Webber for a year and I have been at the party for the past 4 years. Between the political director and the Executive Director we cover the legislative session. Also, Joe Alick was a contract employee for us last year for 2 months while I was on maternity leave. Otherwise the SDGOP has always has two full time staff available for our republican legislators at all times. Also, myself and Max have been at session every day since session has started.

Amanda indicates that she and SDGOP ED Max Wetz are both up at the Capitol on a daily basis. Which as a Republican is reassuring to hear. (Guys, I wasn't picking on you! Believe it or not).


While I'm on the subject of parties and the legislature..

This is actually a nice segueway into discussing an idea I've been noodling on for a week or two. As evidenced above, the assumptions of a person or two do not the truth make. But conversely, the truth does not always change assumptions.

I'm interested in individual opinions of legislators from either party on how they interact with each other their legislative leadership, and their political party. So how does one come up with all this stuff?

The answer? I thought I'd come up with a survey.

When I was working on a master's degree many years ago, my area of specialization was research design and methodology. I like to know emerging trends and how unspoken attitudes interplay with assumptions.

In other words, "Is what I think I'm hearing the actual truth?" Well, heck. Let's find out.

This purpose of the survey I've designed is to help others understand what it's like to be a legislator, how loyalties are pulled in different directions, the role a legislator's political party plays in their political life, and whether or not a number of legislators aspire to achieve higher office.

I've had a couple of people tell me when I do my '10 question' series, they're some of the hardest questions they've ever had to navigate. And I hope my little survey is no different. But the biggest thing here is that the responses will be held as entirely anonymous.

Yup. If legislators are kind enough to play show and tell with me, I'll compile and share responses, but where they came from will forever be held silent. And you can ask anyone who knows me that I'm as good as my word.

Over the next two weeks, I hope to get my survey out, and start to get them back to learn.

And when I have them, the South Dakota War College will be in open session for their thoughts to teach the rest of us about what it's like to be a legislator.