This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
This week, "In the Moment" took a magnifying glass to the race for South Dakota's U.S. House seat.
Challenger and Democrat Sheryl Johnson and incumbent and Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson join the show to speak directly to voters.
Our Dakota Political Junkies provide their analysis. They dive into the role a challenger can play against a popular incumbent and how abortion being on the ballot could impact the race.
Lisa Hager, Ph.D., is an associate professor of political science, and David Wiltse, Ph.D, is a professor of political science at South Dakota State University.
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The following transcript was auto-generated and edited for clarity.
David Wiltse:
For any incumbent, we have this sense that there should be an opposition. There should be a challenge to any incumbent's stay in office, and a lot of people just think that that competition keeps them honest, keeps them on their toes and keeps them connected to their constituency.
The fact is in most races we don't have much of an opposition. We don't have much of a challenger and a whole passel of these things go uncontested.
There really isn't any systematic evidence that the quality of representation is better or worse. And I think in this case, you could make a pretty good case that Dusty Johnson has done a very good job keeping connected to his constituency. Polling shows that he's one of the most popular politicians in the state, if not the most popular politician in the state, and I don't think there's a great deal of harm that comes from even token opposition or moderately strong opposition. It just violates a sense that a lot of people have of how democracy ought to work.
Lori Walsh:
Right. There's money at stake too. If you don't have an opponent, you don't really have to spend any money, and therefore that money builds and builds, right?
David Wiltse:
That's a factor. And that money builds into a war chest that can stave off more opponents. But for the most part, money is not a huge obstacle for people who are running for office, particularly if that race is in a competitive state or competitive district. Money tends to find its way into those races.
Lori Walsh:
So, Lisa, with that in mind, you can either add to that, but also I'm wondering then what a challenger's job is. Is it about believing that you can win and really chipping away at a candidate that you think is vulnerable?
Lisa Hager:
I think it depends on what it is your goal is in running. So some just want to expose some particular issues with a candidate, particularly the incumbent by saying, "Hey, these are the types of issues that they aren't paying attention to or they aren't representing their constituents' sincere interests in."
But then there is obviously that component of, well, if you're going to run, you should believe that you can win by making some of those arguments. You may realize though that the cards are stacked against you, so you can't necessarily have as much opportunity to win as you'd maybe want, but if you can try to chip away slowly but surely and try to continue to show some of these things that can be helpful for you.
Lori Walsh:
The issue of abortion is on the South Dakota ballot, and challenger Sheryl Johnson is also making it number one in what she's talking about with voters. How does an issue a ballot question like abortion impact the race, Lisa?
Lisa Hager:
I think it can have an impact. It's definitely an issue that's at the top of voters minds, so knowing that they're going to be going to the ballot box and needing to make a decision on a particular policy issue but also evaluating different candidates on a variety of policy issues, that being one of them. If that is an issue that's important to them, I think that is something that will impact their vote choices, not just on the ballot initiative question.
Lori Walsh:
Dave, do you think a Democratic candidate in South Dakota can ride the wave of abortion support to make inroads against Dusty Johnson?
David Wiltse:
Not much. It might get a few points. It might give you a little bit of a bump, but we would have to overcome some serious, serious obstacles for that challenger because he is an incredibly popular politician despite the fact that South Dakotans are very evenly divided on the question of abortion.
It's not salient enough for most people to change their partisan preferences. I would be stunned if this proved to be that powerful of a boost.
Lori Walsh:
It would be a major upset?
David Wiltse:
Oh yeah.
Lori Walsh:
That's safe to say. We can't call the race, but it would be a major upset. We would definitely be talking about that the next day. What would happen if Sheryl Johnson defeated Dusty?
David Wiltse:
Yeah, we would be talking about that and I would be polling as fast as I possibly could to try to figure that one out.
Lori Walsh:
Lots of people have said on the show that everyone expects Dusty Johnson to run for governor in the future, and Sheryl Johnson has made this part of her campaign as well where she has said, "Does he even want to be in Washington? I want to be in Washington. He wants to come home and be governor."
Lisa, does he have to answer that question yet?
Lisa Hager:
I think because it's something that's getting brought up he is going to probably answer it in some sort of way. But I suspect it will be a diplomatic, wishy-washy kind of way in order to defuse the comments that she's making. Something along the lines of, "If I didn't want to be in Washington, I wouldn't be running for reelection," and so on and so forth.
Maybe just talking about things relating to wanting to do the good work for the people of South Dakota, which still leaves the door open for him, possibly running for governor, but still making the point that he's focused on what he's doing right now, which is running for House.
Lori Walsh:
Dave, anything you would add to that about a potential shakeup and how we're hearing people just constantly throw out names for the gubernatorial race two years from now?
David Wiltse:
Much of what Lisa just said, but also, for a position in the House of Representatives that is two years, fine. I mean, if he wants to run for governor in two years, why not? But we can come up with a list of a lot of potential quality candidates for that office. And you just look at all the statewide offices there, the constitutional offices and whatnot, and in many respects, I don't think people care too much about that.
And just like people try to make a big deal of Kristi Noem's apparent national ambitions on this, that and the other, it doesn't really gain traction. And I think if it doesn't gain traction in her case where she is the governor and she is at the head of government, I don't think that's as impactful when it comes to a member of Congress.
Lori Walsh:
Lisa, I heard a super interesting feature on NPR talking about Donald Trump running for office now and showing up for all these podcasts with male hosts and just having chats with male podcast hosts about everything from, "Have you ever been in a fistfight, Mr. President?" Just shooting the breeze with the idea that he was going after young men trying to get them to come to the polls, and some of these hosts have millions and millions of listeners. They're influencers.
Have you noticed the role of influencers? We know Taylor Swift has endorsed Vice President Harris.
Do influencers matter?
Lisa Hager:
This is a really funny question that you're asking me because yesterday in my American presidency class, my students actually brought up influencers because we were talking about celebrity endorsements and whether we think that they matter in terms of elections in general, but especially in an election like this where it just seems like quite a few people already have their minds made up. And then they started talking about all these influencers, which frankly I did not know who any of them were, but a lot of them mentioned how they thought some of them were with audiences of middle school boys and whatnot.
And so I thought that was interesting, especially based on what you were saying with Trump going on these podcasts with a lot of male hosts trying to get males to vote this election.
So I haven't come across anything that tells us about what the role of influencers is. I told my students for their research project, that would actually probably be a good question. And so I think that's something that remains to be seen, and it just plays into how presidential elections have evolved over time from the use of television to then the internet and social media. And now we're talking about social media influencers.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, I had a friend tell me this weekend, a friend from high school that his college roommate had a Donald Trump poster hanging up back in college, and he's obviously my age. And it took me back to that timeframe, the late '80s, early '90s, where Donald was a brand, the thing that they said they aspired to because he was positioning himself to be powerful at the time. I thought, "Gosh, I hadn't thought much about how we knew him when we were young."
David Wiltse:
He still is a brand.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, right.
David Wiltse:
And he's still making the same basic appeals that he was back in the '80s, and I remember this very well. I mean, he'd show up on Letterman and these other things. Just pop in. He was just a social butterfly in the New York scene there, especially the New York tabloids. That's natural to him. And very carefully picking his media and picking his media based on who that audience is.
And I think they have a sense of the Trump campaign that they are facing a bit of a swell when it comes to women getting engaged in this election, and they have better counter that. And if it's with the dude-bro-incel crowd, well, so be it. That's where he is targeting right now.
Lori Walsh:
Interesting. Let's talk about something else. I sent you an article or two that I've been paying attention to about political violence. Maybe you want to discard those articles and say they're not relevant. If so, go for it.
But I'm curious what you thought of them as we look at two alleged, well, one for sure and I think the other one's still being adjudicated, but these attempted assassinations on candidate Trump and different acts of political violence. The research, from what I'm seeing, is a bit mixed as far as whether this is actually growing or decreasing.
Where do you want to begin with this conversation?
David Wiltse:
The article that we saw coming from the researchers from the University of Chicago was pretty alarming, and they are tracking this slow rise amongst a pretty small fraction of our electorate that doesn't discount the use of violence.
Just yesterday on NPR I heard another report coming from a group of researchers at Dartmouth that were saying it's probably smaller than what this Chicago group says, but the point is there is a group of Americans who don't reject the use of political violence. And that is troubling because it violates a very important democratic norm.
We can debate whether this is new or whether it's old or if it's growing, but we can't deny that it is a part of our system. And we have dealt with this a lot in the past and we will deal with it more in the future.
And it's not something that's exclusive to the left or to the right. It's just a little more clean and clear where it's coming from on the right as opposed to the left.
Lori Walsh:
There are people who said willingly that they thought violence was appropriate to keep Donald Trump from the White House, and there were other Americans who said violence was appropriate to install him back into the White House.
Lisa Hager:
I think that, if anything, what's interesting is just that we have political violence being something that we're talking about, that we're having to deal with, and then discussions about what that means in terms of politicians and what they're saying when they're campaigning or doing other public appearances and how that could really encourage some folks to possibly want to engage in political violence.
Obviously, it's very difficult to actually prove that somebody is actually inciting political violence at times, but there's definitely things that can get said that can encourage some of these folks to act or to even just have this viewpoint in the first place that says that it's more acceptable to engage in political violence.
Lori Walsh:
Lisa, where is the line between, is it okay to say your political opponent is a threat to democracy, or is that language that leads to behavior that is illegal and violent?
Lisa Hager:
I think it depends on the candidates themselves and how willing they are to use different rhetoric. Donald Trump has been one in particular when he has been facing impeachment attempts where he says, "I use the word fight, so do Democrats. It's just a term that we use to really talk about how passionate we are about basically what we're fighting for. We're not saying actually do anything in particular."
So what ends up being the issue is not only do you have to say something that is inciting or causing this sort of behavior, but also that by saying it, you know are going to be causing that to happen. And that is very difficult to actually pin down is that if someone actually knew I say this, the following will be the result of it.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. There is also perhaps a cooling down effect of the prosecutions after 2020 prosecutions after January 6th.
Dave, do consequences make a difference? When the rule of law plays out after the dust is cleared, will people remember that certain actions had consequences for the people who went out and broke windows and stormed a capitol?
David Wiltse:
Perhaps, but also remember that they are listening to a campaign that's telling them, well, I'm going to pardon all of you when I'm reelected, and that lowers those consequences, right? If you have this sense that if I go out, play my part, I'm not going to have to pay that price if we're successful. So I don't know.
It's just a rhetorical trap that doesn't say anything good about our system right now.
