This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
On Wednesday, Gov. Larry Rhoden announced Rep. Tony Venhuizen as his pick for the lieutenant governor position. He will need to be confirmed by the Legislature.
Venhuizen is a Republican from Sioux Falls.
He spoke with SDPB's Lori Walsh about the position, his political career and his core conservative values.
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The following transcript was auto-generated and edited for clarity.
Lori Walsh:
Seated across from me is South Dakota's newest lieutenant governor. Lieutenant Governor Venhuizen, welcome, thanks for being here.
Rep. Tony Venhuizen:
Well, thank you. I still have to be confirmed by the Legislature, so I don't want to be presumptuous, but it's good to be here with you, Lori.
Lori Walsh:
The announcement came this morning, and Gov. Rhoden has selected you as his choice. And when you came out the door, many members of the Legislature were standing and applauding for you. So one step at a time, duly noted, however, thanks for sitting down with us.
Of course, you've been on the show so many times, but I would not be surprised if many people, when they heard you, were thinking about you as a historian and thinking about you as a legislator and thinking about you as a policymaker and maybe haven't tuned into who you are as a person.
And now that you're stepping into this role, tell us a little bit about how you grew up and your family.
Rep. Tony Venhuizen:
Yeah, thank you. Well, I'm a small town kid. I grew up in Armour, which is a town of 700 people maybe. My graduating class was 21, and, in a small town like that, you go K through 12 with, there's some people who come and go, but probably 15 or 16 of those, you just grow up together and I'm still friends with a lot of them.
My dad grew up north of Wasta on a ranch. Really not that far from where Larry Rhoden is from. For West River, it's not that far anyway.
And my dad was the dentist in Armour. My mom is from De Smet. She was a grade school teacher but stopped working and was a stay-at-home mother once I was born.
I'm the oldest. I have two younger brothers.
My mom's dad was a state senator from De Smet named Henry Poppen, who was a farmer and a real role model of mine. My grandpa Poppen served here in the state senate for 26 years from Kingsbury County, Hamlin County, Clark County, that area.
I've been on the Appropriations committee. He served on that committee for 20 years and chaired it for 12. And so I came here even when I was a year or two old to visit my grandpa on the Senate floor. And it'll be a little surreal to be back there now potentially as the president of the Senate.
Lori Walsh:
Did you talk about public service at the kitchen table?
Rep. Tony Venhuizen:
Oh, yeah.
My grandpa loved to talk about politics and from the time I was very little, that's what we always talked about and bonded over.
And during the state fair, he would always go over to here and to just sit in the Republican building and visit with whoever came in and out all week, of course, De Smet's not that far. And I go up to the state fair with him for a day or two and met Bill Janklow and George Mickelson and Larry Pressler and all these big political figures from the late eighties, early nineties.
So that was always something we shared and with my mom and dad, too. My dad was on the school board. He never ran for any higher office, but we've always been a family that have been very interested in talking about politics.
Lori Walsh:
So what's happening in the state then? Farm crisis, big conversations about ag. What are some of the problems that the state was having that, maybe even as a young person, you were aware that there were people working on those problems and that they were doing that in Pierre?
Rep. Tony Venhuizen:
It was a little later than that. I was 10 when grandpa retired from the Senate, and so it was really just a sense of the institution and the value of the citizen legislature.
And he served back before term limits, and so he served with these guys who'd all been there for 20 or 30 years, like Harold Halverson, Jim Dunn, and George Shanard, Lars Herseth. There was a whole generation of those guys who were here forever. And so just a real reverence for the state legislature as an institution.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. First time you met Larry Rhoden, he said, as a student regent.
Rep. Tony Venhuizen:
Yes. I was trying to remember, I think the first time we met may have been at a Meade County Republican picnic when I was, my first political job when I was in college was, the West River coordinator for the Mike Rounds for Governor campaign when he ran the first time. Mike gave me my first political job.
And so I think that's the first time that Larry and I met. That's more than 20 years ago. And then, yeah, I was the student regent for five years and interacted with him a lot when he was in the Legislature and then, of course, ever since.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Tell us a little bit about your college and your professional life then.
Rep. Tony Venhuizen:
Yeah, I went to South Dakota State. I was a political science and history major. My parents had both gone to USD for political science and then wanting to go to law school, that might've been the more obvious path.
There was a great political science professor there named Dr. Bob Burns, who's retired, still up in Brookings, who recruited me to come there. And he'd been there a long time. He'd been the advisor for Tom Daschle and Mike Rounds and Chief Justice David Gilbertson, and was really a great man and mentor. That's what brought me to South Dakota State. And then I did go to USD for law school.
Lori Walsh:
So a little bit of blue and a little bit of red. Do you have loyalties there when they play each other?
Rep. Tony Venhuizen:
When they play each other, I'm going for the blue.
Lori Walsh:
Okay, good to know.
And you get into history in college, then, or before that? The passion for, specifically, state government history, where does that come from?
Rep. Tony Venhuizen:
I've always been into history. As a kid, I really was into the history of the presidents. Learning facts about the different presidents and so forth. And I was a history major at SDSU too. I did political science and history. So it was always an interest of mine.
I would say my emphasis on South Dakota history really started when I was in the governor's office, when Governor Daugaard was governor.
And my focus on the history of South Dakota governors actually started when Bill Janklow announced that he was dying. And I went to meet with him. Actually, Dusty Johnson and I went to meet with him to talk about how his papers and some of his historic materials were going to be taken care of. And had about a three-hour conversation with him about his life and career. And that really led me into studying him more and then studying the other governors.
And it's been a hobby of mine ever since.
Lori Walsh:
So for most people, when they step into this role of lieutenant governor, they probably have some awareness of the history of it. I would think it's a fairly safe bet to say you have a substantial history, knowledge about lieutenant governor, so it's not something that's going to surprise you, nor is it something that you take lightly.
How do you see the role, historically speaking, of Lieutenant governor in South Dakota?
Rep. Tony Venhuizen:
Well, yeah, I've known well the three most recent lieutenant governors, Dennis Daugaard, Matt Michels and now Larry Rhoden, who are all there for the announcement today.
And so yeah, I've definitely seen how that office works and what's required of it. And the key thing is you're a partner, a governing partner, and a supporter of the governor, but you're the junior partner. The governor is the senior partner, and your job is to be supportive, to be an advisor in private, always a supporter in public, and to do whatever the governor needs you to do and to be ready to take over if the need arises, of course. That's why we have a lieutenant governor.
The other part of the role is being president of the Senate. It's the only office that really has a constitutional role in two branches of the government. And so the lieutenant governor has generally been a liaison between the Legislature and the executive branch, and that's certainly something that I hope to be able to do too.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Tell me what you can tell me about the conversation that you and Governor Rhoden had when he was essentially saying, I would like you to take this journey with me.
Rep. Tony Venhuizen:
Well, I would say I learned in the last month or so that I was being considered, and I'm not going to get too much into all of those conversations, but the offer came on Monday in a phone call.
I think they thought if they asked me downstairs that would maybe be a little too many people around to see that. So he called me Monday morning and asked me to do it, and I accepted.
Lori Walsh:
One of the things he said in his joint session address yesterday was, this person needs to be a person of integrity, loyalty to me, but also loyalty to the people of South Dakota.
Help the people of South Dakota understand what that part means to you.
Rep. Tony Venhuizen:
Well, I'm born in South Dakota. I've lived my whole life here. Both sides of my family have been here for a hundred years or more. There's nowhere else I'd ever want to be. And really, I've spent my whole life serving the state in different roles.
And it's really important to me that we have a state government that is well run, rationally run, conservatively run. In all the different roles I've been in, that's been my goal, and that'll be my goal as lieutenant governor, too.
Lori Walsh:
Tell me what it means to you, and this is a big question, and maybe we'll have another more in-depth conversation about what it means to be a conservative, but when you think about being a conservative, that's not always something everybody agrees on.
In fact, there's often accusations that so-and-so is not a real conservative, whereas conservatives, you do this, but not that.
When you come to the table or when you talk to your kids at the table and they say, what's conservative mean, dad? What would you say to them?
Rep. Tony Venhuizen:
Well, it can mean a couple of different things, and I think that's why sometimes different people use it in different ways. At its core, being a conservative means that you are cautious about making big changes. That you want to be steady and cautious and deliberate in your decision-making. And that you want things to be run responsibly. I think that is the core definition of a conservative.
Now, there are other definitions, and I would say I represent those as well. Fiscal conservatism is the idea that we should keep taxes low, keep spending low, let people keep more of their own money and prioritize personal freedom. And I definitely agree with that also.
You can think of conservatism more in the social or moral issues. I'm pro-life and pretty traditional in my moral worldview.
And so, yeah, I think conservatism can mean different things to different people, but I think I'm a conservative in most of the ways you would define it.
Lori Walsh:
And what did you tell your kids on the phone when you finally said, "I know who the lieutenant governor is going to be"?
Rep. Tony Venhuizen:
They were very excited. I FaceTimed with them last night. They've been very interested in who Governor Rhoden was going to pick for a month or so. And we knew that we couldn't say anything to them because they wouldn't be able to keep it to themselves.
In fact, I told them, you can't tell anyone until 10 o'clock. Well, they ended up getting permission to each tell one friend.
They went to school this morning, and they're going to come to town later today.
But then I've already heard that my son Henry burst into his math class at 10:02 to announce to the whole class that his dad was the lieutenant governor, so they were watching the clock.
Lori Walsh:
Congratulations to you and your family.
Rep. Tony Venhuizen:
Thank you, Lori.
