The Sioux Falls Argus Leader is reporting that Steve Kirby will hold a press confernce on Monday morning at 10:00am to make an announcement regarding the South Dakota Senate Race against Tim Johnson.
Kos has been following developments in the race, noting the "flesh eating zombie" aspects of this particular candidate. Kirby, you may recall, funded a company called Collagenesis which took skin from organ donors (and away from burn victims) and sold it to cosmetic surgeons for use in such important procedures as penis enlargements.
According to a number of people I've talked with in the state, Kirby is in and will make that announcement on Monday. He is contacting VIPs around the state, and beginning to have conversations about who he should hire in terms of consultants and senior staff. As far as I know, no one in the MSM has broken this story, but he will get in on Monday.
Watch an ad a fellow Republican ran against Kirby after the jump...
Kos has been following the developments in the South Dakota Senate race, and potential candidate/body part trafficker Steve Kirby. I posted an ad about the body part trafficking from 2002 yesterday.
Over at Badlands Blue, they've posted results of a DSCC Poll that shows Johnson beating Kirby 70% - 19%. His favorables and job approval ratings are through the roof as well.
The DSCC has put together a website on Steve Kirby, the Republican expected to challenge Senator Tim Johnson.
On that site, they posted an ad ad run by Republican Attorney General Mark Barnett in 2002, (embeded below) discussing his ownership of the Collagenesis, a company that kos mentioned the other day. What is Collagenesis? They buy human skin from organ donors (meant for burn victims) and send it to comsmetic surgeons for use in such important procedures as penis englarement.
WASHINGTON (AP) - South Dakota Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin has decided to endorse Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Herseth Sandlin originally endorsed Democrat John Edwards, saying he had the best positions on rural issues. But in the wake of his departure from the race last month, Herseth Sandlin says she has become convinced Obama "will be a president who capitalizes on what South Dakota's communities, families and entrepreneurs have to offer."
Anyone else notice that the dailykos blog ad trying to sell Robert Bennett's book refers to him as "Roger" Bennett? It's also showing up on my browser with a handful of garbage characters:
Taking the reader deep within his most intriguing and difï¬cult cases, In the Ring shows how Roger Bennett has argued for what’s right, won for his clients, and effected his share of change on the system. This is an intimate and compelling memoir of one lawyer’s attempt to ï¬ght hard and fair.
But beyond that, trying to sell a book by John McCain's lawyer on DailyKos is probably not the best use of Random House's money right now. But it raises a questions, what would you rather read?
Republican lawmakers say that ties between Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and his brother's lobbying firm, KSA Consulting, may warrant investigation by the House ethics committee.
The calls come as Murtha, a former Marine and pro-military Democrat, has made headlines this week by coming out in support of a rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
The Associated Press apparently asked Rep. Stephanie Herseth (D-SD) about her vote in favor of the Online Freedom of Speech Act.
Her quote -- "We've seen a lot of activity on the Internet that I think has actually been good for the public discourse and question the FEC's ability to regulate that in an effective way and not stifle the type of discourse and the type of activity that allows candidates who don't have access to large major donors or the interest groups that are so much a part of modern-day campaigning to be more active as candidates or political participants."
At least some Democrats get it (but note that they're characterizing her vote in favor as "split[ting] with Democrats." Ugh). Full story after the jump...
There has been a lot of debate here, and throughout the progressive blogosphere about the kinds of issues Democrats can champion that both play well with swing voters in red states, and are true to our core progressive values. David Sirota has written extensively about a need for a return to the kinds of economic populism that served our party well from Andrew Jackson to George McGovern.
In a recent post, he noted that GOP leadership in the House has again delayed implementation of Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) which would require meatpackers to note where the meat they sell was raised.
This place, it seems, has been consumed as of late about the internal debates of the Democratic party. We seem to be more interested in criticizing members of this faction or that faction because they failed to vote the right way on some issue that will pass anyway.
Yet there has been almost no discussion about the vote last night on the GOP budget, which passed by a mere three votes -- with seven Democrats deciding to leave early for the weekend. If you are looking for a reason to be outraged, I think this one is a bit more deserving.
Former Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, in his first South Dakota speech since his loss in November, noted that John Kerry was a tremendous liability to him in 2004. Given how conservative South Dakota is, it probably isn't that surprising. But the fact is, when we write off the vast majority of states, and even entire regions of the country at the top of the ticket, it has tremendous consequences in Senate, House, State Legislative and other races across the country.
Because Kerry decided not to compete in places like the Dakotas, Nebraska, Montana, and Wyoming, it means he wasn't talking about the issues that matter to voters there. And it reinforces the idea that he doesn't care about voters in those parts of the country. And it made it tough for people to identify themselves as Democrats in places like South Dakota.
This morning, while perusing the diaries, I came across this fantastic post by Eloy, that cites a Boston Globe article about how well Howard Dean and Harry Reid are working together. I was a little nervous about how the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate were going to work with Dean, and I was heartened to see Dean and Reid developing a good working relationship. As I noted in a comment to that post, when reading that post, I reflexively asked myself, while reading about the leaders of our party, "where is Nancy Pelosi?" And then I thought about it. The answer was pretty similar, "where IS Nancy Pelosi?"
One of the right wing guys has video from KELO-TV on the connection between Thune's Blogs, Jeff Gannon and the Daschle-Thune race. Thune speaks, on the record, on both subjects.
Thune, of course, says that Gannon was a fine "accurate" reporter, and that there was nothing misleading about his campaign secretly paying bloggers who didn't disclose their affiliation.
The word on the street is that the Association of State Democratic Chairs has just endorsed Howard Dean's bid for DNC chair.
This should, obviously, be a significant boost for his candidacy, as the ASDC has more actual votes than any other organization within the party, and the ASDC is a recognized part of the Democratic party establishment. This should also cause the anybody-but-Dean crowd to try to organize around a single candidate, but they are certainly running out of time, and the momentum seems to be in Dean's corner.
Larry Russell, a former State Director for John Thune, and head of the South Dakota Republican Party's GOTV efforts resigned today in response to the criminal investigations into the voter fraud perpetrated by John Thune's nephew and a number of other state party employees.
The Senate, and House, races are extremely tight, and will probably come down to a few thousand votes. The resignation of the head of the Republican GOTV efforts 22 days before the election will have a major impact on the results for both Daschle and Herseth.
Earlier this week, John Thune, the man challenging Tom Daschle in South Dakota found himself in the midst of a family voter fraud scandal. The Thune campaign dismissed the report as a misstatement by a volunteer.
Now, it looks like the fraud is much more widespread than previously reported. According to today's Sioux Falls Argus Leader, the Secretary of State, and the Attorney General, are investigating the allegedly illegal actions of Jeff Thune, John Thune's nephew, and Rachel Hoff, a woman employed by the state Republican party. The fraud is allegedly happening in a number of communities across the state, and local auditors are holding questionable documents that seem to be illegally notarized.
Voter fraud is indeed serious, but there is real irony in John Thune breaking election laws. You may remember that Thune screamed voter fraud in his 2002 race in an effort to justify tactics to suppress the minority vote on South Dakota's Native American Reservations. The Republican Attorney general made clear that there was no widespread voter fraud in 2002, but the Republicans were out in force on the reseravations on election day, attempting to intimidate Native voters. They did the same during the Herseth special election.
John Thune's nephew was caught by KELO-TV committing election fraud earlier today. The nephew of Tom Daschle's opponent said, on camera, that he was a notary public and had witnessed about 75 absentee ballot requests. The station checked the state database of notaries, however, and it turns out he is NOT a notary public.
KELO broke the story, and it led the local news. Video is available.
You may remember that John Thune made claims about widespread fraud in the 2002 race in Indian Country. The Republican Attorney General later admitted there was no widespread fraud. This time, it looks like the fraud is real... and pretty damn close to home.
Update [2004-10-7 1:11:27 by sdindc]: The Sioux Falls Argus Leader confirms that Thune's nephew violated the law. If the people in the story are telling the truth, it's at least three counts.
This makes the CNN interview look sane. Angry? How about challenging Chris Matthews to a duel? Or saying that he wishes he was in the same room as Matthews so he could get up in his face? Maybe we shouldn't hate Zell so much... at this point, he's helping the cause.
I am on the ground in Sioux Falls, and have to say that our people are everywhere. I've run into a handful of Republicans going door to door, but I think the most telling statistic is the story of the candidates.
Larry Diedrich spent tonight at a minor league baseball game. Because of threatening storms, the crowd was very, very small. He spent the first half hour of the game talking to one person. When the announcer said he was there, there was smattering of slight applause, and an equal number of grumbles and boos.
Stephanie Herseth is on the yep tour, and has been getting great responses around the state. Although they actually saw a funnel cloud touch down from the RV last night, they have been hitting their scheduled stops, and making a few unscheduled drop bys on the the way. She stopped by a cafe in a small town the other night and the whole place erupted into applause.
