South Dakota’s Democratic candidate for Senate is accusing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee of deliberately sabotaging his campaign.
Rick Weiland on Monday accused Reid of secretly supporting an independent candidate in the race, former Republican Sen. Larry Pressler.
Weiland said in a statement that a recent round of attack ads by the DSCC against Republican candidate Mike Rounds had not only hurt Weiland, but also had elevated Pressler’s campaign. He charged that the move was intentional because Reid and the DSCC believe Pressler would vote for Reid as majority leader if Democrats keep control of the Senate. Weiland has said he won’t.
Pressler has refused to say who he would caucus with should he get elected. However, his campaign on Wednesday touted an endorsement from Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats. Weiland, on the other hand, announced in a debate Friday that he would not back Reid.
“Harry Reid and [Senate Republican leader] Mitch McConnell have given us the most dysfunctional government in a generation and they need to step aside. I won’t be voting for Mr. Reid as Democratic leader if elected,” Weiland said.
Weiland has been at odds with Reid and the DSCC since he won the nomination. Reid had pushed for Stephanie Sandlin, a former three-term congresswoman, to be the nominee to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson. Reid called Weiland “not my candidate” after he entered the primary. The DSCC initially refrained from spending much money in the general election, and party officials have been quoted anonymously saying Weiland has little chance of winning.
The in-fighting has created an opening for Pressler, who represented the state in Congress for 20 years as a Republican, including three terms in the Senate. That experience has given him a lot of credibility with voters, says David Montgomery, political reporter for the Sioux Falls Argus leader.
“Most of the time, independent candidates tend to be kooks, but Pressler has actually been there and done the job. People remember him,” Montgomery said.
That has resulted in a competitive three-way race. A Mason-Dixon poll for the Argus Leader released Monday has Rounds ahead at 42 percent, Weiland second at 33 percent and Pressler at 13 percent. Another independent candidate, Gordon Howie, is at 2 percent while 10 percent remain undecided.
Rounds has led in all polls since May, according to RealClearPolitics.com, but has never polled above 45 percent and has often been in the 30s. Weiland has never seen his numbers top 33 percent. One poll by SurveyUSA in early October had Weiland at 28 percent, behind not just Rounds, who had 35 percent, but also Pressler, who had 32 percent, his best showing.
“Initially, there was some concern about Pressler’s entry in the race. He is still held in high esteem by a lot of older Republicans in the state,” said Dick Wadhams, spokesman for the South Dakota Republican Party.
The state GOP is no longer concerned. The Monday Mason-Dixon poll found that nearly two out of five South Dakota Democrats were leaning towards Pressler, compared with less than one out of five Republicans. Overall, more than half of Pressler’s supporters are Democrats while a little less than a third are Republicans, with independents accounting for the rest.
That’s a notable shift from early September, when a New York Times poll found that Pressler was drawing equal support from Republicans and Democrats.
Pressler attributes that to a barrage of attack ads the GOP ran against him earlier this month painting him as a liberal. He bristles at the accusation. “I’m the same moderate conservative I always was,” he told the Washington Examiner. He has, however, called for fixing Obamacare rather than repealing it, supports an increase in the minimum wage and has called for higher taxes on upper incomes, among other deviations from the party line.
The GOP ads have fueled speculation that Pressler would caucus with Democrats. “It is hard to see how he would caucus with the GOP after that,” Montgomery said. His campaign declined to clarify how he would vote.
Around the same as the GOP ads, the DSCC began running the ads that Weiland has objected to. But while the GOP ran ads against Weiland and Pressler, the DSCC targeted Rounds. This had the effect of turning people off Weiland’s campaign, the candidate says.
“I do not want phony help that actually helps Larry Pressler by attacking Mike Rounds over what appears to everyone to be my name because it says paid for by the national political party of which I am a member,” Weiland said Monday. For good measure he called on the South Dakota Democratic Party to “join me in repudiating these tactics.”
A spokesman for the state party did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Neither did Weiland’s campaign, the DSCC or Reid’s office.
It is unlikely that Pressler will do as well on Election Day as his current polls show. Historically, supporters of third-party candidates have returned to one of the two major parties at the last minute, especially if the race is close.
Pressler has an additional problem: “I don’t have a get-out-the vote operation,” he said. He hasn’t been able to raise the money to build one.
