Senate District 34 candidate Kehala Two Bulls working to prove Democrats can compete — and win

There will be a number of interesting legislative races in South Dakota this fall. Legislative District 34, which is basically the west side of Rapid City, is a somewhat surprising addition to the list of races to watch.

The incumbent state senator, moderate Republican and hospital attorney Mike Diedrich, was stricken by cancer and is not running again. In the Republican primary in June, Diedrich’s colleague Jason Green was defeated by just 34 votes by Taffy Howard, who served three terms (2017-2023) in the state House in an adjacent district and represents the most extreme wing of the party.

https://www.sdpb.org/2024-08-06/meet-the-candidate-taffy-howard

She gave up her legislative seat in 2022 to challenge Congressman Dusty Johnson and earned 41% of the vote, carrying 11 counties, but not Pennington, which includes Rapid City.

Rapid City Democrats had a candidate for the seat who filed as a “placeholder,”Michael Calabrese, who recently withdrew. That allowed a new candidate — Kehala Two Bulls — to enter the race. She has extensive history in the world of nonprofits, having served as the executive director of the 7th. Circuit CASA Program for more than seven years, providing volunteer advocates for abused and neglected children.

(Full disclosure: As an active Pennington County Democrat, I helped Two Bulls launch her campaign and qualify for the ballot.)

In the short time that she has been running for the seat, Two Bulls has made it clear that she will not just be a name on the ballot, but is running to win. Her challenge is to attract votes from moderate and establishment Republicans in a fairly affluent, strongly Republican district. 

Taffy Howard and Kehala Two Bulls present a strong contrast, personally and ideologically. Neither one is originally from South Dakota. Howard hails from Georgia, has a strong military background and came here with the U.S. Air Force. Two Bulls grew up in a rustic log cabin in the woods of eastern Washington, and met her husband Marty Two Bulls, Jr., a professor at Oglala Lakota College and “artist laureate” for the Oglala Sioux Tribe, when both of them were attending college in New Mexico.

For four years, she was the program manager for an emergency shelter for homeless and abused women in Santa Fe. 

For her part, Howard describes herself as a “freedom firebrand” who “very much (believes) in limited government” but she is strongly opposed to abortion under any circumstances. She clashed with Gov. Kristi Noem over the governor’s refusal to disclose the cost of security for extensive out-of-state travel, and was attacked earlier this year by the South Dakota War College (a reliably conservative site) as an ineffective legislator who sponsored 17 pieces of legislation in her last three sessions, none of which became law. 

Two Bulls recently enrolled in the Billie Sutton Leadership Institute, and asserts that she has "a track record of being effective, on the ground.”

She is somewhat of an environmental advocate, asserting that “we have this beautiful section of Rapid Creek” which gives the city its name and “we have to protect the water” from contamination.

She is running as a moderate Democrat who believes in “protecting people’s freedom and privacy and keeping government small” but is “extremely troubled” by South Dakota’s recent history with the governor and Legislature reversing outcomes that were previously decided by the people. Examples would include the anti-corruption measure (IM-22) that passed in 2016 but was repealed the next year, and abortion rights and marijuana legalization. 

Taffy Howard would appear to be the favorite in the District 34 Senate race, simply because she has the R behind her name. If Kehala Two Bulls wins, that would be an indication that South Dakota is beginning to move away from one-party government and return to a political environment where a diversity of opinions and backgrounds are welcome.

Jay Davis is a retired Rapid City attorney who regularly writes for The South Dakota Standard.