This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
For months, Gov. Kristi Noem was on the shortlist as a vice presidential hopeful for Donald Trump before Sen. J.D. Vance got the nod. Now, another Midwestern governor takes the spotlight.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz joins the Democratic ticket with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Our Dakota Political Junkies are here with analysis.
Jon Hunter is publisher emeritus of the Madison Daily Leader. He's a member of the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame.
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen is co-host of the weekly political podcast Dakota Town Hall and president of the HomeSlice Group.
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The following transcript was auto-generated and edited for clarity.
Lori Walsh:
Jon Hunter is publisher emeritus of the Madison Daily Leader. He's a member of the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame. Jon Hunter, welcome back to the SDPB Kirby Family Studio. Thanks for being here.
Jon Hunter:
Thanks for the invitation.
Lori Walsh:
And joining us from the Black Hills: Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen. He is co-host of the weekly political podcast Dakota Town Hall. And he's president of the HomeSlice Group there in the Black Hills.
Murdoc is seated in our Black Hills Surgical Hospital studio in Rapid City. Welcome.
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
Thank you so much. The studio is so cool, by the way. I love it. This is maybe the nicest studio in the Black Hills.
I shouldn't be saying that. We have studios.
Lori Walsh:
It's a lovely place. Thank you to the donors of South Dakota Public Broadcasting for these beautiful studios in which we sit right now.
All right, let's start with Governor Tim Walz. I'm not sure if you were all listening there, to Christopher Vondracek, which brings up, Jon, the idea of what might have been if the nod had gone to Governor Kristi Noem. All of the reporting would've been scooped up by the national news and there's something sort of thrilling and unsettling about that at the same time. Any precedent for this kind of attention so close to the border here on the east side of the state?
Jon Hunter:
No, I don't see a precedent for that. But in the Midwest, we've talked about this in the past, especially that book came out not long ago about on what is Midwest and who identifies as Midwest.
And so it apparently has a good reputation nationwide. And so, I think if Governor Noem and Governor Walz had both been on the ticket, they would've tried to out-Midwest each other. Who's more Midwest? And they'd wear farm clothes and they'd wear ranch clothes and they would do everything they could to prove they are Midwesterners.
Lori Walsh:
I had to go back and check the numbers. Murdoc, I don't know if you've been part of these conversations. West River as much as we are East River, but J.D. Vance from Ohio, of course. Is Ohio in the Midwest? And the survey of Midwestern identity by Middle West Review and Jon Lauck's group says a lot of people in Ohio consider themselves Midwesterners. West River, South Dakota, do you consider Ohio Midwestern? Is this a battle of the Midwestern VPs?
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
Sitting in the Black Hills, I mean, this is unique to us. But it's funny you bring it up that way. We're constantly in these fun bar napkin debates of if we're in the Midwest. I think we're the mountain west out here. So Ohio can, I guess, have the Midwest.
Jon Hunter:
You're in with Colorado, I guess.
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
Yeah, we're mini-Colorado Springs, if you think about Rapid City.
Lori Walsh:
There's a lot of Colorado people who say they're in the Midwest, too. You got to check out the Middle West Review. It is the largest ever study on Midwestern history and we talk about it maybe to death, Murdoc. So, you'll enjoy catching up with that.
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
Very good.
Lori Walsh:
However, to this point, Governor Kristi Noem, Brad, has turned around and said, "He's terribly radical," which is what we would expect to hear. Anything else out of the responses from John Thune's office, from the Governor's office here in South Dakota that indicate what this battle is going to be like? Because I don't think, even though Kristi Noem is not going to be the candidate, that she's not going to be a proxy right here on the western border of Minnesota shouting South Dakota loud and proud.
That was for you, Murdoc.
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
Oh, I'm sorry.
Lori Walsh:
Did we lose you?
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
No, I'm sorry. I thought that was to Jon. It's my first time. I'm trying to listen and do a good job.
Jon Hunter:
Can't you see us pointing at you?
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
Well, I think Walz was the perfect candidate to try to out Midwest, I guess is the phrase. I also saw he's not afraid to start taking hard shots right away, which I think that's something the Democrats, I think, have sorely needed.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Speaking of that, let's talk about your time in Sturgis. Have they printed the new T-shirts yet?
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
It's been kind of the joke. The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, we were honestly a little scared. It was going to be the first national event where the T-shirt printers were going to maybe not have an editor or two. But so far so good. It's the norm. The Sturgis Rally audience is certainly a Trump audience. The T-shirts are what you expect.
Lori Walsh:
All right, well, if you haven't been there, I mean, the last time I was at Sturgis, Hillary Clinton was on the T-shirts and on the back of a lot of motorcycles. They were very misogynistic T-shirts.
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
Yes, they were.
Lori Walsh:
And then there were also a lot of freedom and images of Donald Trump looking like Rambo or a warrior. So tell us, in an FCC-friendly way, are they putting Kamala on the back of a bike in the same way? Because I'm very curious to see if that was a Hillary unique thing or if that was a gender unique thing. How is she showing up?
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
I mean, certainly a little of both. It's a little early, so it's not Harris everywhere, certainly.
Lori Walsh:
Well, we didn't know about it, right?
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
Yeah.
Lori Walsh:
I mean that's a surprise.
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
If this would've been maybe a couple of weeks down the road, I guess. I'm not trying to make the Sturgis Rally attendees look bad, but some of the shirts they wear do make them look bad.
Lori Walsh:
Well, and it's not always what's selling, but it's maybe what's for sale.
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
Right.
Lori Walsh:
Some of those end up in a box and going home. And they're novelty, to be fair.
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
Yes. And you could see that in 2016. The Confederate flag T-shirts kind of got popular. And then maybe they took them home and got yelled at by their family and they stayed in a box. So you don't see those as much, which is nice.
Lori Walsh:
I was trying to figure out the difference between a T-shirt that people are going to buy and the T-shirt that gets you in the store.
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
Sure. The one they hang on the wall to get you to walk in. The Sturgis Rally has always been a very politically-free group. This is my 24th Sturgis rally this year. It used to be more of a "Keep Austin Weird." You know what I mean? It was really odd, everyone-welcome, you-do-you, mind-your-business weird. And now it has a weird militant tinge to it, which that'll burn out like everything else.
Lori Walsh:
Which brings me to the race this week. Right? And that's going to be on Fox.
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
It's Fox Television. So the rally, the second weekend of the rally needed a boost. And now there's this thing where the Sturgis Rally, going back to the 1930s, has a wonderful history of motorcycle riding and races. And now that this event is going to be on the second Sunday, similar to how NASCAR does Chicago or F1 does Las Vegas, they go right through downtown. And so there'll be the New York Yankees of the motorcycle racing world speeding through downtown Sturgis on the second Sunday. It's so exciting.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. So Jon Hunter, if you're advising Governor Kristi Noem and you know this national audience is going to be watching this race, is this an opportunity for her to be in the spotlight? And if so, what should she take that opportunity to do?
Jon Hunter:
I wonder if there is an opportunity there. I think people who would tune in to watch those races would be interested in the races themselves, that they would not be interested in a political debate there. Now that being said, there is an audience, and in a close election, every audience counts, every vote counts. And so anytime I think you can get your message to more people, they would try to do that. Now, I don't know if the organizers of the races or anyone else would carve out time to take a look at a governor is part of that or not. But I think both campaigns probably want to reach every possible audience they can.
Lori Walsh:
Murdoc, has she been out to the rally this year? I haven't seen that yet.
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
Yeah. Governor Noem was out yesterday. There was a big Military Appreciation Day. There's a lot of veterans and service members, and so she came out to do stand on the rally point and give some proclamations, which was great. I've always kind of been hard on our administrations for not trying to get the most out of the Sturgis site. It's the largest event we have in the state. It generates hundreds of millions of dollars in economic benefit all through the state and on the interstate corridors. And so even though sometimes they're not my favorite governors, I still like that they come out and try to support the rally.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Jon, speaking of military, the vice presidents are two military veterans. Tim Walz, National Guard, J.D Vance, U.S. Marine, former. Walz has a longer career of course, but that's interesting, too. It's been a minute since we had that.
Jon Hunter:
Well, I think what's really interesting is if you look back, we had enough wars in time that it used to be all candidates had military veterans. Especially post-World War II, presidential candidates, vice presidents. I mean if you look Nixon, Carter, Ford, all of them.
Lori Walsh:
Your Commander-in-Chief. Yeah.
Jon Hunter:
All of them. Right.
Lori Walsh:
That's supposed to be.
Jon Hunter:
And so, it really wasn't, I think, until Clinton, until you had a new president without military experience. So I often thought it was, and I remember telling my dad this, I said, "I think that if you are going to be Commander-in-Chief, I think it's valuable to have been in the military itself. And obviously, presidents have other responsibilities, but certainly foreign policy and military leadership are key elements. So yeah, I do find it interesting. But the pool doesn't have as many military veterans as it used to.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. I want to pivot a little bit. We can go back to this in a minute, if you gentlemen want to. But I do want to make sure that we take it home to column that Jon wrote in the Madison Daily Leader recently that is talking about the latest state financial scandal. And this is the indictment of Lonna Carroll, who is a former DSS employee, former state employee for embezzling, allegedly, a whole lot of money, $1.8 million.
Jon, this is not the first time we have sat and talked about financial scandal and oversight. Maybe we should catch people up who are new to it. But in the last 10 years, we have seen a number of taxpayer dollars not end up where they were intended to go. And not always with justice or punishment for some interesting reasons that we'll unpack here. So, set us up please.
Jon Hunter:
You triggered a lot of thoughts already. But yes, it is. Now, let's get right out of the way, it's alleged crimes. Right? Innocent until proven guilty. But you're right, this would be the third major state scandal. Millions of dollars involved.
You remember the things we talked about before, the EB-5 Visa scandal, and then the Mid-Central Education Co-op, which was associated with the Gear Up program. They were a little bit different. They're not state employees of South Dakota. Those were programs set up and used federal dollars. Or in the case of the EB-5 thing, it was actually investor dollars, foreign investors coming to South Dakota and bringing money with them, and then people siphoning those off. So, they are very different than those three situations.
The one with Lonna Carroll really disturbs me because it appeared to be over such a great length of time and not having been caught for that long, if true. But to take $1.78 million over 13 years, presumably 13 audits and multiple supervisors and other people who would be interested in this, really worries me. Because that would indicate if you've got, I don't know, 12 or 13,000 state employees, are there other opportunities for this, if that can go on that many times?
You asked me to fill in the sink. So, Lonna Carroll worked for the Department of Social Services in the Child Protection Services area. And that money is intended to help families in reporting child abuse and neglect, connecting parents to resources, involved a little bit with foster and others, working with parenting skills and all that. So by anyone's stretch, those are great causes.
And we talked a little bit. I talked to Josh Chilson, by the way, at SDPB, who's done some great reporting on that. We talked earlier, is this a theft of South Dakotans? You and I didn't pay any more taxes because of what this allegedly happened, but the state appropriates that money each year to this program. And I would presume there are always more requests than money available. And so, who was it stolen from? People who made requests and didn't get the money for whatever. And I'm presuming, they're good purposes. So, that's even a bigger tragedy with this. But I have deep concerns that is this an isolated case? Only one person stole from state government out of 12,000 employees over the last 13 years? I doubt it's an isolated case.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Murdoc, three governors, multiple department heads or secretary heads, so it's really hard to pin this on any one leader. But also Attorney General Marty Jackley has definitely been the person who, more than once, has been charged with cleaning these problems up. What else stands out to you in this particular case, Murdoc?
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
The thing that stands out to me in this case is, as Jon was saying, where the money's being taken from is the biggest step. I don't know why this isn't a larger conversation in every statewide election. It's almost insane that it's not. And it certainly should be in 2026, as 17 people are going to be running for governor.
Jon Hunter:
But Murdoc, you're exactly right. It should be part of that debate. And who's going to be able to address that best?
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
I don't think anybody can. Marty, specifically, I don't think has an angle to say he has been cleaning it up because these things keep happening. I don't mean to be hard on our Attorney General.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, but he doesn't make the policy. He's been very clear.
Jon Hunter:
Right because he's the police officer. He's not the policy guy.
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
Right.
Lori Walsh:
And I would've said that. I would've said Marty Jackley is the one who you're going to— Because he's going to be able to come out and said, "I've fixed other people's problems." But anybody who's been affiliated with the Rounds' administration or the Noem administration is going to struggle because somebody else could make a case out of that. Maybe?
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
And it's a shame sometimes the opposition for this argument comes out of the most conspiracy-minded on Facebook. And it'd be nice if the Chamber of Commerce Republicans punched into this debate a little.
Lori Walsh:
All right, we're going to leave it there for now. Murdoc, thank you so much for joining us. Jon Hunter, thanks as well. We'll have more on this conversation in the weeks ahead.
Jon Hunter:
Thanks, Lori.
Brad "Murdoc" Jurgensen:
Thank you.
