Tim Johnson’s long, successful career, spanning four decades, proved a Democrat can win in South Dakota
These days, it is common to hear that “you can’t win running as a Democrat in South Dakota.”
Just last week, we lost a great man (Tim Johnson) who consistently won as a Democrat in South Dakota. Indeed, in his 36-year political career, he never lost an election. He was the only South Dakotan to serve in all four legislative capacities, including as state representative (1979-1983), state senator (1983-1987), United States representative (1987-1997), and U.S. senator (1997-2015). That means he defeated Republican rivals a total of 12 times in addition to four primary wins.
To win all those elections, Johnson had to attract thousands of Republican and independent votes. He was re-elected to Congress in 1992, carrying every county in South Dakota (yes, even Haakon and Harding) and earning over 69% of the vote against John Timmer, a conservative who had also served in the Legislature. At the same time, George Bush was narrowly carrying the state against Bill Clinton.
Johnson (seen above with then-Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in a 2009 public domain image posted on wikimedia commons) served as a mainstream Democrat. He did not always vote the party line in Congress, and considered what was in the best interest of his constituents. He was not identified with the party’s left wing, as George McGovern was after his 1972 presidential candidacy as the voice of Vietnam War opponents.
But he wasn’t a conservative, “Blue Dog” Democrat either, like Stephanie Herseth Sandlin , who opposed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and voted against environmental protections, supported drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and questioned whether human-caused climate change was real.
Johnson drew support from the left, and also from the Blue Dogs, but his ideological stance was firmly in the middle of his party.
There was nothing flashy about Tim Johnson. He was genuine, decent and likeable, but not really charismatic. He was like an Eagle Scout or the boy next door, which may explain why so many South Dakotans were comfortable voting for him.
The one election that he almost lost was his second Senate race in 2002. George W. Bush was in the White House then, and the 9/11 attacks had happened the year before. John Thune, who had already served three terms in the House, ran a very strong race against Johnson.
On Election Night, Thune took the lead, and most of us went to bed thinking that Johnson lost. But the votes from Pine Ridge came in around breakfast time, and the turnout from Shannon County (Oglala Lakota today) was absolutely heroic: 2,856 for Johnson and just 248 for Thune. That vote, and strong wins on the state’s other eight reservations, enabled Johnson to eke out a 524-vote margin statewide.
Johnson did not forget who had rescued him in that tough battle. He worked hard to obtain necessary funding for the Mni Wiconi project, which brought good drinking water from the Missouri River to the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations, and to other rural West River communities that needed it.
It is worth mentioning that John Thune, in his sole defeat, didn’t throw a temper tantrum and scream that the election was stolen. He didn’t even ask for a recount. He was a gentleman about the loss, conceded and congratulated the winner, and geared up for another Senate run in 2004, in which he narrowly ousted Tom Daschle from South Dakota’s other Senate seat two years later. Of course, this was before the era of Donald Trump.
But the 2002 cliffhanger may not have been Tim Johnson’s most spectacular election victory. That was probably his win over Jim Burg in the Democratic primary for the U.S. House seat back in 1986. Yes, we had hotly contested Democratic primaries back then.
Jim Burg, a farmer and legislator from Wessington Springs, had the support of the party establishment and had made an appearance on national TV to decry the Farm Crisis of the 1980s that led many South Dakota farmers to bankruptcy and even suicide.
When Tim Johnson, the soft-spoken lawyer from Vermillion, entered the race for the seat that Daschle was vacating, few observers gave him much of a chance. He ran a dogged campaign, but not a negative one, assisted by a bright young campaign manager named Drey Samuelson, and edged Burg by 47.8% to 45.2%. Each candidate won his own county with at least 90% of the vote, but Johnson’s wins in Sioux Falls, Rapid City and Aberdeen made the difference.
For his part, Burg went on to oust a Republican incumbent off the Public Utilities Commission that fall, not a bad consolation prize.
Johnson suffered a catastrophic brain hemorrhage in 2006, which kept him off the Senate floor for nine long months and left him with permanent disabilities. It would have been rational to expect him to retire at the end of his term. But he got back to work and ran for a third term in 2008.
Despite his physical disabilities, Johnson won that race easily, winning all but four counties and defeating Republican Joel Dykstra by a margin of 62% to 38%. Thousands of voters split their tickets, supporting John McCain for president and Johnson for senator. He continued to serve with distinction until 2014.
South Dakota had somewhat better, bipartisan politics back in the early 2000s, and we were rewarded with a true public servant, Timothy P. Johnson.
Jay Davis is a retired Rapid City attorney and frequent contributor to The South Dakota Standard.
