Don’t let party loyalty trump voting for competent candidates

There will be some new faces in Pierre this month as legislative and executive oaths are administered. One face, however, will be familiar. Marty Jackley will return to serve as attorney general.

Jackley’s previous time in the office was highlighted by competence and integrity, two qualities missing during the tenure of his successor, Jason Ravnsborg. Even without the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, voters in this state must wonder what in the world they were thinking, electing a man to the top law enforcement office in the state who had little to no prosecutorial experience.

The only thing Ravnsborg had in his favor was his status as a Republican. He handily defeated the Democrat running against him, even though Randy Seiler had a wealth of experience as a federal prosecutor.

Ravnsborg ended his tenure in the attorney general’s office as the first statewide elected official ever impeached and removed from office. Prosecutors at the impeachment proceedings went to some lengths to question Ravnsborg’s integrity and honesty. Even their most offhand examples show that this was a man who should never have been put in a position of responsibility, no matter what his political party affiliation.

Prosecutors maintained that after the accident that killed Joseph Boever of Highmore, Ravnsborg lied to law enforcement about the accident and improperly used the resources of his office to impede the investigation.

They built their case by questioning Ravnsborg’s integrity with small examples. Ravnsborg was noted for speeding even before the Highmore accident. To highlight his tendency to misuse his office, they showed body camera footage from officers who had stopped Ravnsborg for speeding. In each case, he established early on, “I’m the attorney general.” At one stop, as Ravnsborg was heading to National Guard training, he switched it up saying, “I’m the commanding officer.”

Prosecutors questioned Ravnsborg’s honesty with an example from the night of the accident. As Ravnsborg got ready to leave a political event in Redfield and head back to Pierre, he had two phones: his personal phone and a government phone for conducting state business. Prior to starting his trip home, Ravnsborg took his personal phone and set the On My Way app. This is an app that provides prizes and points to drivers who don’t use their phones while driving.

Ravnsborg set the On My Way app on his personal phone and then proceeded to give his government phone a workout. While he was driving to Pierre he had a conversation with his father. When that call ended, the attorney general scrolled through news headlines and checked his email. All the while, he was racking up prizes with the On My Way app for not using a phone while driving.

People who voted for Ravnsborg, and there were about 179,000 of them, might ask how they were supposed to know they were getting a small-time scammer when they voted him in as attorney general. There’s probably no way to know that, but they could look at the credentials of the other candidates at the GOP nominating convention and ask how a lawyer with little to no prosecutorial experience was nominated to run for attorney general instead of either of two other candidates who had experience as state’s attorneys. Maybe On My Way wasn’t the only one getting scammed.

The way to elect the best people is to loosen up a little on party loyalty in favor of experience. It’s likely South Dakotans will be faced with another less than qualified elected official in the years to come in the person of new Secretary of State Monae Johnson.

Johnson unseated incumbent Secretary of State Steve Barnett at the Republican convention by using election denier buzz words like “election integrity” and “voter fraud.” To those who pay attention to elections in South Dakota, it seems like the state has plenty of the former and little to none of the latter, but that doesn’t matter to Johnson and it didn’t matter to 61% of the voters at the GOP convention who kicked Barnett to the curb.

Johnson, who campaigned on bringing more transparency to the Secretary of State’s office, roundly refused to say whether she believes that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in 2020. Now South Dakotans find themselves in the position of having an election denier running the office that oversees elections. That’s like having a member of the Flat Earth Society run your globe company.

When Barnett cut out for the private sector, Johnson was sworn in early as secretary of state. Her short time in office has been notable for the veteran staff members she’s let go for no good reason.

Recent history shows that we may be putting too much faith in political parties to field serious candidates for office. It’s up to voters to look at the qualifications of candidates and, sometimes, put aside their party loyalties in favor of electing the most qualified people. If we had done that, perhaps the state could have avoided the dumpster fire that resulted from Ravnsborg’s tenure as attorney general and maybe we wouldn’t be catching the first whiffs of the smoldering mess that Johnson is making in the Secretary of State’s Office.