This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
The third most popular presidential candidate on the ballot has a South Dakota drug conviction in his past.
In 1983, the discovery of heroin in Robert F Kennedy Jr's luggage on a flight to Rapid City made national news.
Our Dakota Political Junkies offer their analysis on this headline and other political stories.
Kevin Woster is a reporter in the Black Hills. Seth Tupper is editor-in-chief of South Dakota Searchlight where he wrote a commentary on RFK Jr.'s political baggage.
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The following transcript was auto-generated and edited for clarity.
Lori Walsh:
The third most popular presidential candidate on the ballot has a South Dakota drug conviction in his past. In 1983, the discovery of heroin in Robert F. Kennedy Jr's luggage on a flight to Rapid City made national news.
Let's get this story now from our Dakota Political Junkies. Seth Tupper is editor in chief of South Dakota Searchlight. He wrote the story on RFK Jr's baggage for Searchlight.
And Kevin Woster is a political reporter in the Black Hills. He reports on lots of other things too.
Seth, welcome back.
Seth Tupper:
Thanks for having me.
Lori Walsh:
Kevin, thanks for being here as well.
Kevin Woster:
I'm so happy to be here with Seth and with C.J., who's punching all the right buttons and lights. You must be able to hear me.
Lori Walsh:
C.J. Keene, welcome to the room.
Alright, Seth Tupper, tell us a story about RFK and South Dakotan Bill Walsh, who is not related to me. We have checked deeply into this, so we're going to say that out there. Nope, nope.
Seth Tupper:
Yeah, so this was something that, I don't know, months ago I happened to be talking to Scott McGregor, who is a local retired attorney here. And I think at the time RFK Jr. had been in the news for something.
And Scott said to me, you realize he was arrested here for drug possession in the 1980s. I said, no, I didn't realize that.
And he said he remembers it well because he was in the state's attorney's office at the time. So I kind of filed that away and thought if RFK Jr. ever does make the ballot, it'd be worth doing a retrospective on what exactly happened.
And, basically, RFK Jr. at the time was friends with a guy named Bill Walsh, who a lot of people in the Black Hills know really well. Longtime Democrat, very active politically, owned a hotel in Deadwood.
Anyway, Bill had been active in Ted Kennedy's unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier in the 80s. And through that, he had gotten to know RFK Jr. and he had gotten to know that RFK Jr. has some struggles with addiction and had offered, hey, if you ever need any help finding treatment, Bill told him apparently that he'd be willing to do that.
So in 1983, according to Bill, RFK Jr. called and said, "I need some help. And I'm coming out to South Dakota." Unfortunately for Robert Kennedy Jr. when he was on the flight passengers noticed that he was acting strangely and he was apparently high and flight crew radioed head to authorities.
And they let him go but got a search warrant for his luggage and found heroin in his luggage, which then made national news. And he pleaded guilty to drug possession and got two years of probation and successfully completed that probation.
According to him, he got through treatment and has been basically sober ever since.
Lori Walsh:
He has got quite a story of a struggle and tragedy in his family, but then also in his personal life and that maybe sometimes shows up in the way he presents himself in the world, too. Now he's going to be on the ballot. Where is the petition movement here?
Seth Tupper:
As far as we know, yeah. According to his campaign, they turned in last week 8,000 signatures and they only needed, I forget the exact number, but somewhere around 3,000 for an independent candidate to make the ballot in South Dakota.
So last I knew the Secretary of State's office was reviewing those signatures to see if enough of them were from South Dakota registered voters. I haven't checked lately to see if they've verified that, but that's where it was at.
So presumably, he will be on the ballot.
Lori Walsh:
Kevin, had you heard this story before?
Kevin Woster:
Yeah, I've heard the story before, but Seth, as you might expect, knowing Seth's reporting skills, added some things that either I'd forgotten or didn't know in the first place. And it was fascinating.
And of course, Bill Walsh's relationship with the Kennedys go way back and a Democrat that he is, old guard, old school Democrat, and cares deeply about the members of the family.
And obviously Bobby Kennedy Jr., he cares about him, although as he says at the end of Seth's story, "I'm not going to vote for him." And he agrees with some things. He doesn't agree with others.
I don't think Bill would be likely to drop a dead bear cub off in a city park. I'm not aware of him having any brain worms, but oddly enough, he's a smart guy, I think, who often doesn't sound very smart. This story provides some insight, I think some really valuable insight into his connection to South Dakota, and also reminded me that it's been an awful long time in Rapid City, in Pennington County since we had a Democratic state's attorney and deputy state's attorney.
Lori Walsh:
Alright. So Seth, Bill Walsh tells you for the story, "I'm not going to vote for him." It's not somebody who's going to support, even though it's somebody he's known for a long time.
Seth Tupper:
Right. And I think Bill really wants to support him and has a lot of good feelings about him still. And maybe if he would've been running as a Democrat and would've somehow gotten the nomination, he would've. But yeah, I just thought that was interesting worth including that Bill Walsh, an Irish Catholic Democrat, probably more inclined to support somebody with last name Kennedy than just about anybody you could ever find. But he just can't go there this time with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just because of some of the different things that he said and done about various things, the behaviors that have been mentioned, vaccine misinformation that he spread, and different things like that.
Lori Walsh:
Let's pivot a little bit to talk about some other things happening in the state today, including a visit from U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland talking with tribal communities, talking with U.S. Senator Mike Rounds.
Kevin, what do we know about the visit and the timing of it as it gets into this bigger story of crime in America?
Kevin Woster:
Well, I know pretty much what Seth told me about it because he didn't find out about it until early this morning, very shortly before they had the news conference.
And we were just talking about this, whether it's the heightened security on anybody in the administration right now after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and just the high emotions that are out there, but it didn't give reporters very long to scramble to get set up, which they did.
And this is an issue that goes back in decades and our members of Congress have been trying to deal with it, trying to help the people on the reservations deal with this crime problem, which of course is not new, although the fentanyl and the opioids issues certainly seem to have maybe worsened it. '
Although I got to tell you, 20 years ago I was up covering some of the crime issues on the Standing Rock, and I was in a small town with a woman up there who was a fierce fighter of the crime there and defender of women that were abused. And I felt unsafe just walking around with her. And she was as strong as I've ever been, strong as any person I've ever been with in those situations.
And they were, again, trying to find federal help to bring more officers onto the reservation. And they did that a couple of times where they added officers that didn't last. It was a short-term surge of law enforcement that I hope Merrick Garland is more than just a political stop because they need a lot more than politics.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Seth, anything you want to add to this visit, the connection with U.S. Senator Mike Rounds being there, and just some of the conversations you're hearing coming out of this.
It's early, of course. It's happening like today.
Seth Tupper:
Yeah, yeah. We scrambled, as Kevin said, to get our reporter to the Sioux Falls event and a reporter to the Wagner event later today. One of the things I'm interested in is this comes right after — what has it been a week or two since the Department of Defense announced it was going to do a review of medals that were awarded to soldiers for the Wounded Knee massacre? Now, shortly after, we have the U.S. Attorney General visiting and talking to tribal leaders.
I don't know whether somebody, the Biden administration or somebody got to the Biden administration or whatever, but for whatever reason, it seems like somebody in the Biden administration has decided they want to get some action on some issues with tribes in South Dakota and Native American issues in South Dakota before he leaves office because suddenly these things are getting some focus. You know, Wounded Knee was 134 years ago. And then suddenly we have this review.
And as Kevin mentioned, tribal public safety has been an issue for a long time, decades, and now suddenly here they are. So I don't know exactly what has brought this about or if it's just coincidental the two things, but I'm curious. And that's one of the questions we're asking is was there some kind of particular trigger or something that got attention to South Dakota at this moment?
Lori Walsh:
U.S. attorney Alison Ramsdale talks about the Sturgis sex trafficking sting that we spoke to Marty Jackley about yesterday, our South Dakota attorney general. So talking about the people also who are tirelessly working to protect innocent people from crime in the state of South Dakota. So some politics, perhaps some policy, we'll see.
Seth Tupper:
Yeah, I'd be really interested to see what happens at the round table this afternoon when there are more tribal leaders there and where I guess tribal folks will have a chance, presumably, to ask whatever they want and not an opportunity that comes every day, obviously, to talk to the U.S. attorney general directly on your own turf. So very interesting.
Lori Walsh:
I want to get to housing here because that's important, but also U.S. Senator John Thune receiving the Titan of Public Service Award from the Orrin Hatch Foundation this week.
Kevin Woster, the significance of that award in the context of leadership of the Senate in November, as Mitch McConnell steps away from Senate leadership. What, if anything, does this say about Senator Thune's path to power this fall?
Kevin Woster:
Well, one of the things it might say is some of the traditional Republicans are trying to line up support for Thune and try to build on some momentum that he may have because I think given his long and — well, not that long, but it seems long — looking back over the Trump years, his relationship with Donald Trump, which hasn't been particularly good overall. You have to wonder if Thune's ascension to the number one spot to replace Mitch McConnell in the Senate for Republicans is going to go smoothly.
And maybe this is part of that effort to try and bolster his standing. Hatch was, I guess they called him this, the Titan of the Senate at one point. And Thune certainly has been a strong leader in the Senate for the Republicans. He's done a lot for South Dakota, a lot for the party there, and also fundraising over the years for the party.
So you can kind of see why it goes there. As I was talking earlier this morning, there are certain things, I think, maybe a titan of the Senate when he had a chance to vote as Senator Rounds did, to prevent Donald Trump from after the insurrection and the attack on the Capitol to prevent Donald Trump from ever holding office again. That might've been something the tighten that the Senate would've done, but easy for me to say, I'm sure.
But overall, yeah, I think that's what's going on. I think he's a strong person in the Senate and they're trying to make him a little stronger right now.
Lori Walsh:
Seth, anything you want to add or should we pivot to Mike Rounds and housing and earmarking?
Seth Tupper:
Well, I think what stands out to me about the Thune thing is just it highlights that he's still taking the old school approach of trying to establish relationships with people in the Senate, work behind the scenes to advance his ambitions and things. And the new school is go out on social media and insult people, draw attention and stoke outrage. So we'll see if Thune is still trying that old approach of a more traditional approach and is it going to work? He's betting that it will apparently to help him rise to the leadership spot in the Senate.
Lori Walsh:
Alright. Scrutiny at Ellsworth Air Force Base after a scathing report following a crash in January. However, the world is changing for this base and it is increasing the population. The population of the Black Hills is increasing without Ellsworth in the conversation. So affordable housing continues to be a big challenge. And Seth, you wrote about a new federal program seeking to address it.
What do we know about the efforts?
Seth Tupper:
Yeah, one of the things that was really interesting to me was Senator Rounds got a $30 million earmark inserted in an enormous federal spending package. And that earmark is going through the Ellsworth Development Authority to the Black Hills Area Community Foundation. And they're going to set up community trust funds all over the Black Hills with local advisory boards and builders will be able to apply to these trust funds and boards to get basically low interest loans to help build affordable housing.
And it was very interesting to me because earmark's got to be a dirty word in Washington for a while. The guy who had Senator Rounds' seat before him, Tim Johnson, was sort of the king of earmarks and was very proud to say that and that was part of his mission, was bringing back federal funding to good projects in South Dakota.
When Senator Rounds was talking about this the other day at the event, it struck me that it was just funny. He reminded me so much of Senator Johnson and his defense of earmarks and what good he could do with them and sort of his approach. It made me reflect on the many ways those two men are alike.
Lori Walsh:
Alright, let's wrap it up there. You can find Seth Tupper's work at southdakotasearchlight.com.
Kevin Woster, Seth Tupper, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate your time.
Kevin Woster:
Our pleasure.
Seth Tupper:
Thank you.
