Tomorrow voters across South Dakota will vote in the House special election to replace former Congressman Bill Janklow who was arrested for reckless driving and vehicular manslaughter. Democrat Stephanie Herseth is a "Blue Dog Democrat" from a South Dakota political dynasty. Republican Larry Diedrich is a former state legislator. This race has been hotly contested both in South Dakota and on the national stage, with both the RNC and the DNC pouring millions of dollars into their candidates.
In the end, it’s my prediction that Herseth will win in South Dakota by a narrow majority of 51% to Diedrich’s 49%. Herseth has the benefit of wide name recognition, massive out-of-state campaigning, and the DNC’s massive influx of money into the state.
The problem is that Herseth has been campaigning on South Dakota values – she’s said that she supports making the tax cuts permanent. There’s been a back-and-forth between the Herseth and Diedrich campaigns over this – Diedrich points out that she doesn’t support making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent. Herseth has accused Diedrich of being untruthful – let’s see if she puts her vote where her mouth is. She campaigned as a centrist Blue Dog Democrat – the question is whether all the money she’s recieved from Democratic partisans from Tom Daschle to Emily’s List comes with strings attached. Will Herseth represent South Dakota or Washington D.C.? Should she win, that will be the major question. Considering that Herseth will only win because of substantial Republican crossover votes, she had better ensure that she isn’t pulling a Tom Daschle – running as a moderate in South Dakota and being a liberal radical in Washington.
Diedrich’s campaign made the crucial mistake of not defining Herseth before Herseth defined herself. Once Herseth managed to reach out to many prominent South Dakota Republicans, Diedrich was already running an uphill battle. Diedrich needed to expose the concept that Herseth would be unable to maintain her South Dakota values so long as she was accepting the help of radical liberals in Washington. Unfortunately, Diedrich was unable to counter Herseth’s positive campaign before she had already ingratiated herself with most voters. It didn’t help that Herseth’s last campaign and subsequent campaigning statewide afterwards gave her a major name-recognition advantage over Diedrich. Diedrich also had to contend with the wave of disgust after Bill Janklow’s legacy of possible corruption with pardons, his unwillingness to do public service as part of his vehicular manslaughter conviction, and his attempts to overturn that conviction. Janklow always ran as a law-and-order candidate – except when the laws would have applied to him. Many Republicans, myself included, have been disgusted with the way in which Janklow has disgraced the state of South Dakota, and this reaction is likely hurting Diedrich by connection as a member of the Legislature.
This race will be close, and I would not completely rule out a last-minute surge to Diedrich. The GOP has sent many of its own volunteers to South Dakota to help Diedrich out, and this race is serving as a major test of subsequent GOTV drives later down the road. However, all the volunteers and money in the world can’t help when many Republicans have already made up their mind to vote for the Democrat in the race. In the end, it wil be the crossover votes that will propel Herseth into South Dakota’s lone House seat.
