SOUTH DAKOTA Undated (Seth Tupper, Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight) – Legislation affecting the regulation of pesticide labels has become an issue in South Dakota’s U.S. House race after a Democratic challenger leveled criticism at incumbent Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson.

The Washington Post reported in June that Rep. Johnson worked with biotech giant Bayer to insert a provision into a draft of the federal farm bill. According to legal and environmental experts interviewed by the Post, the provision could help shield Bayer from lawsuits alleging that frequent use of its Roundup herbicide causes cancer.

Rep. Johnson is seeking reelection to a fourth term. His opponent in the Nov. 5 general election is Sheryl Johnson, a Democrat.

Sheryl Johnson alleged in a press release Thursday that Rep. Johnson is “putting the interests of large corporations above the health and safety of our people.”

Rep. Johnson answered questions from South Dakota Searchlight on Wednesday at the Sioux Empire Fair in Sioux Falls.

“Our legislation doesn’t do anything in the courts,” Rep. Johnson said. “If somebody’s got a legitimate claim in court today, there isn’t anything that we would do to adjust their claim from a backward-looking perspective.”

He did not address the forward impact of the legislation. The Post reported that Bayer is “hoping to erect a blockade against future lawsuits.”

Bayer’s role

Roundup was originally produced by Monsanto, which was acquired by Bayer in 2018. Users ranging from homeowners to farmers apply Roundup by the hundreds of millions of pounds annually to kill weeds. Some seeds sold to farmers are genetically modified to tolerate Roundup.

Bayer has already faced expensive litigation from plaintiffs alleging links between Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, and cancer. In 2020, the company agreed to pay approximately $10 billion to settle lawsuits involving roughly 125,000 claims, without an admission of wrongdoing.

Rep. Johnson, in answer to Searchlight questions on Wednesday, did not deny working with Bayer.

“Listen, anytime you’re writing legislation, you need to be talking to a broad cross-section of stakeholders,” he said. “Shame on any member of Congress who thinks they have all of the answers and just goes in and tries to make law for the whole country without talking to people who were affected.”

Sheryl Johnson’s news release referenced Searchlight’s Wednesday story about Rep. Johnson’s comments.

“While he talks about consulting ‘the people affected,’ he fails to recognize the most critical stakeholders — those who have cancer as a result of exposure to Roundup,” Sheryl Johnson said. “These people, many of whom are South Dakotans, deserve more than just lip service. They deserve justice and accountability.”

Rep. Johnson: Uniformity is goal

Rep. Johnson has described his provision in the farm bill as providing “uniformity” in pesticide labeling. The provision would reaffirm the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s legal authority over pesticide labeling requirements, and squash attempts by individual states — including California — to impose their own labeling rules.

California has attempted to require a label on Roundup warning users that glyphosate causes cancer. That requirement has been blocked in federal court.

The EPA does not classify glyphosate as cancer-causing, but plans to reevaluate that position in 2026. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

Rep. Johnson declined a follow-up request Thursday from Searchlight for another on-the-record interview. He instead provided a written statement reiterating that his pesticide labeling provision would ensure labels are “consistent across the country, consistent with federal law, and consistent with EPA’s science-based process.”

“There is a reason the Constitution calls for Congress to regulate interstate commerce,” the statement said. “Having 50 different and competing product labeling requirements across the country would be a mess. That’s why I’ve supported a variety of labeling legislation, especially in the agricultural and food arena.”

He noted the provision has support from colleagues of both parties, and that 11 state attorneys general — including South Dakota’s — urged the EPA this week to prevent a patchwork of state regulations on farm chemicals.

Challenger has ‘serious questions’

Sheryl Johnson criticized her opponent’s rationale and questioned his motivation.

“By advocating for federal-only oversight in this case, Dusty Johnson is effectively putting the interests of large corporations above the health and safety of our people,” Sheryl Johnson said. “His selective advocacy for federal oversight raises serious questions about whose interests he’s really serving.”

Data compiled by Open Secrets, a nonprofit that tracks money in politics, shows that Rep. Johnson’s campaign committee has received $4,000 from political action committees affiliated with Bayer this election cycle, and $1,000 in each of the 2020 and 2022 cycles.

Open Secrets also reports a combined $11.83 million of lobbying spending by Bayer or its affiliates in 2023 and 2024.

The House has not yet scheduled a vote on its 1,000-page farm bill. The current version of the bill expires Sept. 30.

 

PIERRE, S.D. (Joshua Haiar, South Dakota Searchlight) – Opponents of a Nov. 5 ballot measure that would reduce state sales tax collections worry it could be the final straw that breaks South Dakota’s AAA bond rating — a criticism that the measure’s proponents dispute.

The measure is intended to repeal state sales taxes on groceries, but opponents say its imprecise language could broaden the impact to other goods and services. That uncertainty led the state’s Legislative Research Council to make a broad estimate of potential state government revenue losses from the measure, ranging from $134 million to $646 million annually.

That would exacerbate the budget impact of a temporary, across-the-board state sales tax reduction from 4.5% to 4.2% that legislators approved in 2023, with a sunset scheduled for 2027. The cost of that decision has been estimated to be more than $100 million annually while it’s in effect. The state’s total budget is about $7 billion.

Matt Michels, a Republican, helped the state achieve its AAA bond rating while he was Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s lieutenant governor from 2011 to 2019. Michels said the budget hole that would be created by the ballot measure and the resulting legislative battle to address it could result in a bond rating reduction.

“Money runs from instability,” Michels said.

On the other side of the debate, Augustana University economics professor and Sioux Falls Democratic state Sen. Reynold Nesiba supports the ballot measure and is not worried about its potential impact on the bond rating.

“Democrats care about fiscal responsibility, but we also care about the obligations the state has to South Dakota families,” he said. “It’s simply wrong to make people pay a tax before eating.”

Nesiba said if the measure passes, the Legislature should honor the measure’s limited intent to repeal state sales taxes on groceries. He said raising general state sales taxes back to 4.5% would leave little for credit rating agencies to be concerned about.

An independent expert, Donald Boyd, co-director of the State and Local Government Finance Project at the Center for Policy Research at the University at Albany in New York, said in an emailed statement that passing a tax cut with no plan to pay for it could affect ratings agencies’ views of the state.

“All else equal, that would be a negative in the eyes of the rating agencies,” Boyd said. “Whether it’s enough of a negative to affect the bond rating is a different question.”

Bond ratings explained

One of the ways governments finance public projects is by selling bonds to investors, and then paying the money back with interest over time.

Agencies such as S&P Global rate bond issuers for their creditworthiness, with the highest rating of AAA going to those with the strongest ability to repay. Governments with better ratings can get lower interest rates on their bonds, resulting in lower debt payments.

South Dakota’s ascent from AA+ to AAA happened under Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard in 2015 and 2016, when all three major rating agencies made the change. The agencies attributed the upgrade to the state’s healthy savings, conservative fiscal approach, long-term financial planning, and fully funded state employee retirement fund.

“We knew by achieving that, we would save taxpayers a lot of money,” Daugaard said.

The ratings also benefit governmental subdivisions of the state, such as school districts. South Dakota school districts have saved over $33 million in interest on new construction, land purchases, and debt refinancing since the rating upgrade, according to South Dakota Department of Education spokesperson Nancy Van Der Weide.

Seventeen states have a AAA rating. The ratings are apolitical; South Dakota’s neighbor, Minnesota, which leans Democratic, has a AAA rating credited to a large and diverse economy and healthy savings and revenues. Nebraska and Iowa are the other South Dakota neighbors with AAA ratings.

Complicating factors

Rep. Tony Venhuizen, R-Sioux Falls, is Daugaard’s son-in-law and served him as chief of staff. He’s worried about the sales tax ballot measure’s impact on the state’s credit rating.

“Cutting out one of our most reliable sources of revenue in a public vote, with no plan to pay for the loss in revenue, does not look great to these credit agencies,” he said.

Nathan Sanderson, executive director of the South Dakota Retailers Association, is part of a coalition opposing the ballot measure and served as Daugaard’s director of policy and operations when the higher bond rating was achieved.

He said his former boss was able to overcome ratings agencies’ skepticism about South Dakota’s reliance on a single revenue source, the sales tax, for most of its income.

“What Daugaard did is show, yes, we only have a sales tax, but we’re really, really fiscally responsible,” Sanderson said. “Someone with limited income can get a large, low-interest-rate loan if they live within their means, build up a solid savings, and pay their bills on time.”

Sanderson worries that eliminating another large, reliable chunk of sales taxes could change ratings agencies’ views.

If the ballot measure passes, lawmakers could seek to limit its impact by amending the measure to ensure it only addresses state sales taxes on groceries. They could also seek to end the existing across-the-board sales tax reduction early, before its scheduled expiration date in 2027.

But that would be considered a vote to raise or impose a new tax, which requires a two-thirds majority of the Legislature, according to Michels.

“I think it would be pretty difficult to get the two-thirds,” he said.

If the ballot measure passes and lawmakers don’t immediately raise state sales taxes back to 4.5%, Michels said they would likely have to cut the budget or dip into the state’s reserve funds to meet the state constitutional requirement that they balance the annual budget.

Sanderson said the need for budget cuts or reserve spending would strain the state budget while it’s being weaned from several years of federal COVID-19 pandemic funding. The state’s most recently adopted budget was $7.3 billion. Of that, $3.2 billion was federal funding. Comparatively, he said, the state budget was $4.3 billion in 2019 and $1.4 billion was federal funding.

“This is happening as we’re already anticipating a decline in the budget,” Sanderson said.

In 2023, lawmakers decided to pass the temporary sales tax reduction instead of Gov. Kristi Noem’s proposal to reduce the state sales tax on groceries to zero percent. While lobbying for her proposal, Noem warned lawmakers that voters would pass a ballot measure repealing the state sales tax on groceries if the Legislature didn’t act.

Her office did not grant an interview but sent South Dakota Searchlight a statement.

“Governor Noem and her team are preparing for all potential scenarios depending on what the people of South Dakota decide at the ballot box,” her spokesperson Ian Fury wrote. “South Dakota will have a balanced budget next year, as we have for 135 years.”

Noem cabinet member and Bureau of Finance and Management Commissioner Jim Terwilliger said in an emailed statement that the state’s low debt levels, strong reserve funds, fully funded pension fund, strong economy, and long history of prudent budget management will not go away if the ballot measure passes.

“Those are all positive aspects of how we are rated as a state, and I do not expect those to change because of an initiated measure,” he said.

‘Do the right thing’

Nesiba alleged that Republicans including Michels, Venhuizen and Sanderson are essentially arguing that the Republican-dominated Legislature cannot be trusted to manage the budget if voters decide to repeal the state sales tax on groceries.

“They are arguing South Dakotans will choose to repeal the sales tax on groceries, and Republicans will then act irresponsibly, and that’s somehow the voters’ fault,” Nesiba said. “It would be a Republican leadership failure. The Legislature works for the people, so they need to make it work. If voters can’t trust Republican leadership, then we need new leadership.”

Nesiba said credit agencies would only downgrade South Dakota’s bond rating if they lose confidence in the Legislature’s ability to navigate the issue in a fiscally responsible manner.

“I trust that the Legislature will do the right thing,” he said.

Among the 45 states that collect a statewide sales tax, South Dakota is currently 36th in combined state and local rates, making it one of the lowest, according to the nonprofit and nonpartisan Tax Foundation.

 

NORTH SIOUX CITY, S.D. (Joshua Haiar, South Dakota Searchlight) – Nearly seven weeks after the devastating June 23 flood at McCook Lake, victims are still in limbo about the possibility of federal aid, and some feel abandoned by government officials.

Renae Hansen is a flood victim and works with the McCook Lake Izaak Walton League, which has tried to fill some of the leadership and organizational gaps in the flood response.

“We have no idea what’s happening or what to expect,” Hansen said. “It feels like we’re being kept in the dark.”

The flood destroyed or severely damaged at least 40 homes and some infrastructure in the McCook Lake area. Some flood victims — including some who lack flood insurance — are staying in hotels or with family or friends as they wait for news about possible help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Hansen also described the confusion and lack of coordination on the ground in McCook Lake, noting that the Izaak Walton League was filling recovery roles beyond its expertise because no other institution was doing it. She recently moved away from that effort to resume handling the organization’s primary obligations.

“We were just trying to help,” she said. “But we didn’t have any official support or direction. We had volunteers trying to log damages without any guidance from the city or state.”

FEMA wait explained

Some residents expressed their frustration about the wait for federal assistance on Monday during a North Sioux City Council meeting. More than a month passed between the flood and Republican Governor Kristi Noem’s July 26 request to the president for a major disaster declaration, and there has been no word yet on a presidential declaration that would trigger FEMA aid.

Hansen wants to know why it took that long and is calling for more state action.

“We have residents on the brink of homelessness,” Hansen said. “We need answers, but we also need support.”

In Iowa, which also experienced flooding from the same historically heavy rainstorms in late June, President Joe Biden approved that state’s disaster declaration on June 24. However, Iowa had already been working with FEMA regarding other storms that began on June 16.

Tony Mayne is a media relations specialist with the FEMA Region 8 Office. He said South Dakota took the “standard” route for its disaster declaration, and Iowa chose the “expedited” route.

“South Dakota determined the process that would be best for the state,” he said.

Mayne said the expedited route is for disasters where officials are confident they know the extent of the damages — because if an overestimation is submitted, the state pays the difference. Mayne did not speak for the state of South Dakota but said flood damage across the 25 affected counties varies widely in comparison to McCook Lake.

“Sure, damage to that one area is obvious,” he said. “It’s not just that one area.”

In response to questions about the process from South Dakota Searchlight, Noem’s spokesman, Ian Fury, pointed to a previous press release comment by Kristi Turman, director of the Division of Emergency Services at the South Dakota Department of Public Safety.

“This thorough damage assessment was normal protocol for a presidential disaster declaration,” Turman said, “and it’s an important part of the process to make sure all eligible counties and citizens are included.”

As flood victims wait on assistance, some contractors who assisted with the flood preparations and response are being paid. During the North Sioux City Council meeting, council members approved several pay requests for the flood, including a $59,000 payment to The Blue Cell, a contractor based in Colorado. North Sioux City’s mayor said state officials advised hiring Blue Cell to help manage the disaster. Todd Manns, Blue Cell’s owner, did not respond to an interview request.

Noem: ‘Everything we can to help’

Hours before the McCook Lake flood on June 23, Noem held a press conference in North Sioux City where neither she nor any of the other public officials in attendance expressed any grave concerns about McCook Lake, even though a record crest was already projected on the nearby Big Sioux River.

The main focus of the press conference was a voluntary evacuation order for nearby Dakota Dunes and the construction of a temporary levee, which neither Noem nor anyone else at the press conference clearly explained was intended to divert water toward McCook Lake. Authorities hoped water wouldn’t reach the lake and assumed that if it did, the lake would swell manageably, and excess water would drain toward the Missouri River. Instead, floodwaters slammed into the lake on the evening of June 23 and caused catastrophic damage.

Following the June 23 afternoon press conference, Noem flew to a speaking engagement for a county Republican Party fundraiser in Tennessee while the floodwaters ravaged McCook Lake that night.

From June 23 to 27, Noem shared over a dozen posts on her personal X (formerly Twitter) profile, mostly about the southeastern South Dakota flooding. Two linked to videos of press conferences that have since been deleted. Posts show she visited the region in that timeframe.

“My heart goes out to the families on McCook Lake whose homes were destroyed by this flooding,” she shared. “We’ll keep doing everything we can to help with the situation.”

“Everything” did not include deploying the National Guard, which Noem declined to do.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell joined Noem in McCook Lake to survey the devastation days after the flood. “I am going to do everything I can to get assistance to our communities ASAP and help these families start to recover their lives,” Noem wrote in posts featuring photos with Criswell.

South Dakota U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson told South Dakota Searchlight on Wednesday that he thinks FEMA aid will be approved soon.

“This is a no-brainer,” said Johnson, a Republican. “This is not a close call. This was a devastating event.”

However, Mayne, the spokesperson for FEMA, said the agency can’t do much for the people who lost their homes. FEMA’s Individual Assistance program is designed to meet basic needs and help households recover, but it typically covers only essential expenses such as temporary housing and minor repairs.

“We’re not going to make you whole, we’re not going to rebuild your house,” he said, advising residents to turn to local organizations and nonprofits.

U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, said it’s unlikely the congressional delegation will be able to secure federal funding beyond the FEMA aid.

“We’ll look at what other options might be out there, but it’s going to be challenging,” he said.

 

SOUTH DAKOTA Undated (Seth Tupper, South Dakota Searchlight) – Bill Walsh picked up a ringing phone in Deadwood during the fall of 1983 and heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s voice.

“Bill, I’m off the wagon,” Kennedy said, according to Walsh. “I’ve got a flight coming in tomorrow.”

The two had become friends in 1980. Kennedy campaigned in South Dakota that year for his uncle, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Walsh and RFK Jr. were fellow Irish-Catholic Democrats, and Walsh was a former priest with experience counseling addicted people. He knew about Kennedy’s struggles and had offered to quietly help him seek treatment.

Things didn’t go according to plan.

Drugs in his luggage

Passengers on Kennedy’s flight to Rapid City saw that he was high. The flight crew radioed ahead to authorities, who let Kennedy go but obtained a search warrant and found heroin in his luggage.

Scott McGregor was a deputy prosecutor in the local state’s attorney’s office. He said it wasn’t difficult to find Kennedy, given the widespread knowledge of Walsh’s political connections.

“I got the notion that, well, why would a Kennedy be coming out here anyway?” McGregor recalled. “And it crossed my mind it had to be to go see Bill Walsh.”

Kennedy was charged with felony drug possession, and the story made national news.

Rod Lefholz was the local state’s attorney at the time. As a Democrat — the last one elected to a Pennington County office, as far as he knows — he faced the task of prosecuting a member of the nation’s most famous Democratic family.

Lefholz approached the case like any other and said it proceeded normally, other than the presence of national media such as People magazine in the courtroom and letters that arrived by the dozens from people with opinions on the case.

“Some of them wanted me to hang him from a lamppost,” Lefholz recalled, “and others said, ‘Why do you keep picking on the Kennedy family?’”

In the end, Kennedy pleaded guilty and avoided prison based on a number of conditions, including two years of probation and the completion of addiction treatment.

He honored the conditions, earned his release from probation a year early and left South Dakota behind — until this week, when his long and strange trip through life brought him back to the state (in name, at least) as a presidential candidate.

His campaign said it turned in 8,000 petition signatures, more than the 3,502 needed from registered South Dakota voters to make the ballot as an independent. The Secretary of State’s Office is reviewing the signatures for authenticity.

A brain worm, a dog (or goat) and a bear

Walsh, now 84, said he stayed in touch with Kennedy for a long time, though not as much lately. Still, Walsh said he accepted an invitation to the launch of Kennedy’s presidential campaign last year, when Kennedy was seeking the Democratic nomination before switching to run as an independent.

Walsh has always felt sympathy for the trauma Kennedy endured during and after the assassinations of his father, U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy. Walsh also respects RFK Jr.’s work as an environmental lawyer and agrees with some of his political views.

But, Walsh added, “Every time I think he makes sense, the next day he’s got a worm in his head, or he’s eating a dog or putting a dead bear in Central Park.”

Those are all references to news stories about Kennedy from the past several months.

In May, The New York Times obtained a copy of a deposition Kennedy gave in 2012, when he said earlier bouts of memory loss and mental fog were diagnosed as “a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.” He has since learned that the parasite “was not the issue” with his brain, he said, and that it was actually related to metal toxicity from mercury.

The dog-eating accusation was in a July 2 story in Vanity Fair. Kennedy said the animal in the photo obtained by the magazine was a goat he ate during a river trip in Patagonia.

Last Sunday, Kennedy was forced to admit ahead of reporting by The New Yorker that he left a dead bear cub in Manhattan’s Central Park in 2014 because he thought it would be “amusing.” He picked up the roadkill while driving through the Hudson Valley and intended to eat it, he said, but got busy and left it in the park instead. When the bear was found that year, it sparked a media sensation and a mystery that wasn’t solved until Kennedy’s admission this week.

Still more baggage

That’s a small sample of Kennedy’s alternately tragic, inspiring, bizarre and troubling life and times. The more concerning incidents include his rampant spreading of vaccine misinformation — such as his false statement that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” — and an allegation that he forcibly groped a woman in her 20s who was working for the Kennedy family as a babysitter during the 1990s. Kennedy has since apologized “for anything” he may have done to the woman but said he has “no memory” of the incident.

Four decades after his drug conviction in Rapid City, Kennedy says he remains in recovery from addiction. He deserves credit for that. But his other personal baggage weighs heavily on some voters who might otherwise be strongly inclined to support a Kennedy for president.

Just ask Bill Walsh, who’s still very Irish, Catholic and Democratic, and still fond of RFK Jr. and the broader Kennedy legacy.

None of those loyalties will convince Walsh to support Kennedy if his name is on the ballot Nov. 5.

“I’m not going to vote for him,” Walsh said.