Opinion: South Dakota has seen its own party upheavals

Talk about it

When I think of upheavals in the South Dakota Legislature caused by elections, I usually think first of the 1972 vote that put Democrats in charge (sort of) of both houses and the 1976 vote that put Republicans firmly back in command of both chambers.

As I looked through old legislative history to compare some past elections to this month’s GOP victories in legislative races, I was reminded that the Democrats’ surge really started in the 1970 election and the first hints of the Republican resurgence came in 1974.

I began my career covering state government in the fall of 1969, so the 1970 session was my first as a legislative reporter. The year I started, Republicans held a 27-8 advantage in the state Senate and a 59-16 margin in the House.

In those days, the House had 75 members. The architects of redistricting after the 1970 census went to common House and Senate districts, meaning the boundaries of each Senate district included two House seats. Quick math: 35 districts equals 35 senators and 70 representatives. The House lost five seats.

That change didn’t come until after the 1970 election, though. The 1970 returns showed that Democrats had gained three seats in the Senate and 13 in the House. While the Republicans still held two-thirds advantage in the Senate, they fell short of two-thirds in the House. That was significant at the time. With Democrat Gov. Richard Kneip in office, it meant that if he and the GOP had a huge fight over a piece of legislation and he vetoed it, the Legislature couldn’t override the veto in the House without a few Democrats voting against their own party’s governor.

The 1972 election is memorable, of course, because it did put the Democrats in charge of the Legislature. The margin was paper-thin in the Senate — 18 Democrats, 17 Republicans. That was a gain of seven seats for Democrats. In the House, control for the Democrats was less than paper-thin. It was on paper. Each political party ended up with 35 members in the House (this was the first session after the reduction from 75 to 70 members was implemented). Because Democrats also controlled the governor’s office, they got to organize committees and choose the speaker and do those kinds of things. That’s why Democrat Gene Lebrun of Rapid City was speaker of the House for two years.

Since it takes 36 votes to pass any regular bill in the House, neither party had enough representation to push things through without cooperation from the other side. That didn’t reduce the amount of political rhetoric swirling around the Capitol building when lawmakers were in town, but it did force members to talk to each other if they really wanted to get something done.

The pendulum began to swing almost immediately. While Democrats added a seat in the Senate in the 1974 election (for a 19-16 edge), they lost two in the House, where Republicans returned to power 37-33.

For two years, then, the Legislature operated with Democrats holding a small margin in the Senate and Republicans having a small margin in the House. It was an interesting time to be a news reporter.

In 1976, the GOP made up most of its lost ground. Voters favored Republican candidates for 24 Senate seats (a pick-up of eight) and 48 House seats (a gain of 11). That gave the party a two-thirds vote in each house. Kneip, who had been an enthusiastic campaigner in the past, wasn’t on the ballot that year. He had two years left on his third term, though, and he and the Republican majority did some serious scrapping.

In the 1977 session, Kneip vetoed 30 bills, a remarkable number. Legislators overrode 16 of those vetoes, an equally remarkable number. Reporters like me had a remarkable time covering all of that action.

Terry Woster’s column is published Wednesdays and Saturdays in The Daily Republic.

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