South Dakota Democrats were at war with themselves during the summer — can they move forward?

Part 1 of a 3-part look at South Dakota’s Democratic Party

Politically, South Dakota is as red as the back of a farmer’s neck in July. It’s as Republican as a chamber of commerce luncheon. It’s as conservative as a CPA’s tie.

But that wasn’t always so.

South Dakota is also one of the places where the Populist Party of the late 19th century gathered strength. It is the home state of famed liberals like Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern and Tom Daschle. It was the first to offer its voters the power to change laws through referendum and referral.

Today, however, Republicans dominate state government. They have won every statewide election since 2008. The last time Democrats elected a governor—they have only won seven gubernatorial contests since the state was founded in 1889—was in 1974. The last time a Democratic presidential candidate carried the state was 1964.

Democrats are outnumbered 94-11 in the South Dakota Legislature, with the GOP holding supermajorities in both chambers.

And the South Dakota Democratic Party is in disarray. Its executive director, Dan Ahlers resigned in July, setting off a series of explosive developments. Despite his resignation, Ahlers continues to work for the party, however.

Jennifer Slaight-Hansen, the chair it elected with 93 percent of the vote in February, was recalled and removed from office in August following a bitter dispute with Ahlers, whom she hired to run the party’s daily affairs. She filed an appeal, which was denied by the party.

There have been a series of chairs and executive directors in recent years, with none lasting long or making significant impacts.

It gets worse. There are more than twice as many registered Republicans as there are Democrats in the state, and voters who are either registered 

independents or list no party have just about caught up with the Democrats. They soon may rank third in total registrations, with all trends pointing in that direction, according to monthly registration totals from the South Dakota Secretary of State’s Office.

In recent years, the party closed its offices in Sioux Falls and Rapid City and laid off all staff, unable to pay for both space and people. It has since reopened both offices, but finances remain precarious.

What happened?

Daschle, who represented South Dakota for 26 years in Congress, eight in the House of Representatives and 18 in the Senate, was part of an all-Democratic delegation in 2004, when he and Tim Johnson were in the Senate and Stephanie Herseth won a special election in June to fill the state’s lone House seat.

McGovern, Daschle and Johnson all served three terms in the Senate. Humphrey, who was born in South Dakota but moved to Minnesota as a young man, served in the Senate and as vice president. From the 1950s to the early years of the 21st century, liberals from the Upper Midwest were national figures, powers in the Democratic Party and presidential hopefuls.

Now, the South Dakota Democratic Party is in almost complete disarray.

“The chaos is deeply troubling and potentially quite harmful,” Daschle said.

“I have not been in contact with anyone since the turmoil began. I am no longer involved with South Dakota politics except for sending a monthly contribution to the party,” he said. “The fact that independent voters have now almost passed Democrats in registration is concerning and a reflection of the trends throughout the Midwest in recent years. We must always hope for a brighter future, but there is little to find in the current circumstances that would generate much hope.”

Johnson, who suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2006 that greatly reduced his mobility and impacted his speech, was elected to a third term in 2008 but retired in 2015. He declined to comment for this story.

His son, former U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson, has been offered his choice of campaigns by South Dakota Democrats, and once seemed a successor to his father. But he said he will never run for office.

Herseth Sandlin, as she became known after marrying former Texas Congressman Max Sandlin, also declined to discuss the party’s decline. She is a living symbol of the change in state politics.

Her grandfather Ralph Herseth served one term as governor and was the Democratic nominee three times. Her grandmother Lorna Herseth was secretary of state from 1973-79 and her father Lars Herseth was a longtime legislator who came close to being elected governor in 1986.

Herseth Sandlin seemed to have a bright future in politics, winning full terms in Congress in 2004 and 2006 and 2008. She was the first woman to represent the state in the House of Representatives and the youngest woman in Congress.

But she was a moderate who made enemies on the left in South Dakota—such a fragment of the party still exists—and they helped damage her in 2010, leading to her narrow loss to a state representative named Kristi Noem, who had solid Republican support in the election.

Herseth Sandlin, 52, is now the president of Augustana University, a private college in Sioux Falls. She has said her political career is over, although Democrats still hold out hope she may run again someday.

Noem has become a central figure in state politics, winning four terms in Congress before returning home and being elected governor in 2018 and re-elected in a landslide in 2022.

The state’s congressional delegation is all Republican. Sen. John Thune was elected to a fourth term in 2020. After defeating Daschle in a high-profile race in 2004, he was unopposed in 2010 and faced only token resistance in 2016 and 2022.

Sen. Mike Rounds served two terms as governor before shifting to the Senate in 2014. He was easily reelected in 2020.

Rep. Dusty Johnson is in his third term. He had no Democratic challenger in both 2020 and 2022; a Democrat did announce for the office last year, but some bizarre social media posts were quickly uncovered by reporters and he dropped out of the race after a single day.

Tom Lawrence has written for several newspapers and websites in South Dakota and other states and contributed to The New York Times, NPR, The  Telegraph, The Daily Beast and other media outlets.