Black Hills area GOP legislative candidates competing to see who can proclaim their Christianity the loudest
I just had the misfortune to attend a forum for state legislative candidates, all but one of whom were Republicans, which was sponsored by Elevate Rapid City, which is our updated, enlightened Chamber of Commerce, fervently advocating for the interests of the local business community.
The forum was poorly attended, mainly spouses and close friends of the candidates. Questions from the audience were not allowed. There were very few chairs, so the audience remained standing for nearly 90 minutes. Each candidate was given a table, from which they could distribute their campaign literature, and each candidate was given two minutes to deliver an “elevator speech” about why they should be elected to represent us in Pierre.
As a local politics junkie, I picked up pieces of campaign literature from most of the candidates, searching in vain for something with which I could agree. State Sen. Mike Walsh, who was appointed by Kristi Noem to represent District 35 in the closing weeks of this year’s session, replacing the disgraced Jessica Castleberry, has put the word “Re-Elect” on his billboards and campaign cards, although he has never been elected to anything.
Jason Green, a local attorney and associate of District 34 state Sen. Mike Diedrich, who is gravely ill with cancer, proclaims himself a “voice of reason.” We could definitely use some of them in Pierre.
But the most striking recurrent feature in the campaign literature of these Republican candidates, as they try to show just how conservative they really are, is their proclaimed adherence to Christian principles. Article VI of the U.S. Constitution provides that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
However, the political reality seems to require that candidates for the South Dakota Legislature (seen above in a montage from the legislature’s Facebook page) proclaim themselves to be born-again Christians.
Amber Hulse from Hot Springs, who recently completed law school at Georgetown and worked as an intern for Gov. Kristi Noem and former President Donald Trump, proclaims that she “fortified my convictions through an unwavering commitment to Christ, the Constitution, and traditional American values” while she was in that heathen environment.
A recent Miss South Dakota, Hulse hopes to oust Sen. Julie Frye-Mueller in District 30. Former state Rep. Taffy Howard, who gave Dusty Johnson a scare in the 2022 Republican congressional primary and now seeks the state Senate seat in District 34, is a “gun rights champion” with a “100% SD Right to Life Rating,” and proclaims her status as a Christian as one of her essential qualifications.
Greg Blanc, who is the senior pastor at Calvary Chapel and who hopes to oust Walsh from his appointed seat in District 35, describes himself as a "”Christian, conservative, common sense, constitutionalist,” cites the “foundational South Dakota values of faith, family, freedom and fiscal responsibility,” and is also a “pro-life advocate, gun rights defender, family values supporter and law enforcement ally.”
But the champion proclaimer of fervent Christianity as a qualification to serve in the South Dakota Legislature has to be state Rep. Tony Randolph, who is seeking another term as state representative from District 35. His glossy campaign card features both the Holy Bible and a Christian cross, and his “uncompromised principles” include the assertion that “in all we do we must first and foremost honor God in our actions and protect South Dakotan’s (sic) religious freedoms.”
Furthermore, “from the moment of fertilization until natural death, every human life is sacred because every human life has been created by God.” If that does not convince you, Randolph also proclaims that “our right to defend ourselves and our families was granted by God and is protected by the Constitution.”
The one Democrat at the forum, District 32 House candidate Nicole Uhre-Balk, pointed out that South Dakota has suffered from one-party government for too long. As the Republican candidates lined up to show their unwavering fealty to God, guns and the unborn, there were no candidates who advertised themselves as Buddhist or agnostic.
No candidate would support any measures to protect our schoolchildren from gun violence, or question the requirement that a pregnant rape victim must carry her baby to term. Surely a rigid adherence to the most extreme form of fundamentalist Christianity should be the law of the land.
Jay Davis is a retired Rapid City attorney who regularly writes for The South Dakota Standard.
