Commentary: The ‘blue tsunami’ brings a ripple of hope to South Dakota Democrats

By the time Tuesday’s “blue tsunami” washed in from the coasts and reached South Dakota, it was a ripple.

State Democrats added four legislative seats, moving from eight to 12. It was the first time in 16 years Democrats have gained ground in the 105-member Legislature.

Otherwise, South Dakota stayed Republican red as another 16-year streak persisted: It’s been that long since Democrats won a race for a statewide office, and they lost all those races again Tuesday.

Further blunting Democratic enthusiasm is the sobering realization that Tuesday’s 49% turnout was the worst for any South Dakota general election since at least the 1960s. It could thus be said that historically depressed levels of voter enthusiasm are necessary for Democrats to make even meager gains in the Mount Rushmore State. That’s not exactly a solid base for further Democratic success.

Or, maybe it is.

Democrats gain seats in South Dakota Legislature for the first time since 2008

Before Tuesday, it seemed possible there would never again be good news for South Dakota Democrats. Their yearslong slide had shown no signs of abating.

It began in 2008 while Democrats were briefly riding high. Their voter registrations within the state reached a peak of more than 200,000. A Democrat, Barack Obama, won the presidency. Two members of the state’s three-member congressional delegation were Democrats — Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and Sen. Tim Johnson — and both won reelection. In the Legislature, Democrats jumped from 35 to 39 seats.

Yet the seeds of Democratic demise had already been planted with Johnson’s suffering of a cerebral arteriovenous malformation in 2006 and the financial crisis that Obama inherited when he took office.

Johnson won reelection in 2008 while enduring stroke-like symptoms that he never fully overcame, and he decided against running for reelection in 2014, opening the door for Republican Mike Rounds to win the seat. Johnson died 10 years later. Meanwhile, backlash against the federal government’s bailout of big banks gave rise to the tea party movement and turned the tide against Democrats nationally.

Amid all that came the unforeseen, politically rocket-fueled rise of Republican Kristi Noem, starting with her 2-point victory over Herseth Sandlin in 2010.

We all know what Noem went on to do as a U.S. representative, governor and member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Herseth Sandlin became president of Augustana University in Sioux Falls and has never been heard from politically again.

Since 2008, Democrats have lost every statewide race. Trump has won South Dakota three times. Democratic voter registrations have plummeted, falling behind the collective number of people registered as independent, as a member of a minor party or as nothing at all. Democrats’ eight-member legislative delegation this year was their smallest since 1953.

Then came Tuesday, with dire national circumstances that have traditionally created political opportunities. Among the five Democrats who’ve been governor of South Dakota, two won election during the Great Depression and one was elected during the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal.

What the country faces now is not Vietnam or Watergate, but it’s bleak: 7% mortgage rates, $6 diesel, $4 gas, tariff-caused disruptions to the farm and ranch economy, and out-of-control health insurance premiums, among other problems, many of which can be pinned on Trump.

For a path forward, Democrats can seek inspiration from another period that produced a Democratic governor. That was a 1958 victory by Herseth Sandlin’s grandfather, Ralph Herseth, amid a renaissance led by a young dynamo named George McGovern. He took over the state party as executive secretary in 1953 when there were two Democrats in the Legislature. Six years later, McGovern was in the U.S. House (on his way to the U.S. Senate and the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination), while Herseth was in the Governor’s Mansion and Democrats had a majority in the state Senate.

McGovern’s rebuild wasn’t magic. It was grinding, day-to-day candidate and voter recruitment, retold in great detail in the many books by and about him.

This year, by South Dakota Searchlight’s count, Republicans had already won 52 of the seats in the Legislature before the election, thanks to a lack of Democratic candidates in various parts of the state. Yet a cluster of Democrats sprouted in Sioux Falls like a stubborn weed in the state’s Republican garden, rising up to win 10 seats in that metro area.

Therein lies an opportunity to turn those candidates into more candidates, spreading out from Sioux Falls and growing Tuesday’s ripple, if not into a tsunami, at least into a wave that a few more people can surf.