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South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden attends the Sept. 9, 2025, grand opening of High Plains Processing in Mitchell. (Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)
Larry Rhoden’s opponents should probably hope he doesn’t get his way Tuesday when he asks the Legislature to approve his $650 million prison construction plan.
If the legislation passes, it’ll be another big win for the Republican governor in only eight months on the job.
Whether you agree with Rhoden and his policies or not, he’s proven surprisingly effective at resolving disputes and achieving his goals, and at making himself look like a contender in next year’s election.
When Gov. Kristi Noem departed in January to join President Donald Trump’s Cabinet and Lt. Gov. Rhoden was elevated to governor, Rhoden was viewed as a seat-warmer. U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson was expected to easily thwart him in the June 2026 primary.
Election 2026
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That scenario would echo the history of 1993-1994, when Republican Gov. George Mickelson died in a plane crash and Lt. Gov. Walter Dale Miller took over, only to lose in the primary to the better-known Bill Janklow (who served four years as attorney general, 16 as governor and one in Congress).
Rhoden is perfectly cast as the new Miller, not only because of the situation both were thrust into and the subordinate role they were expected to play. Miller, who died in 2015, was also a former legislator like Rhoden, was from the same county as Rhoden, was a rancher like Rhoden, and wore a cowboy hat and boots like Rhoden.
Although Miller’s political career ended with his loss to Janklow, being the next Miller might not be so bad, thanks to a bit of trivia that’s been obscured by Janklow’s outsized place in state history: Miller only lost to Janklow by 8 points in 1994.
When South Dakota News Watch and the Chiesman Center for Democracy released their poll about the 2026 governor’s race in April, Johnson’s lead over Rhoden was 1 point. Since then, Johnson has continued adding to his intimidating pile of campaign cash, which stood at about $7 million as of the most recent filing deadlines for campaign finance reports. Rhoden hasn’t had to file a new report since becoming governor, and there are questions about his ability to gain traction with donors.
Yet Rhoden keeps getting things done.
After taking over in January and applying a reset (his word) to every mess (my word) his predecessor left behind, Rhoden has been wrestling political problems to the ground like rodeo steers. The biggest of those are the three P’s — a pipeline, property taxes and prison construction.
The controversial Summit Carbon Pipeline proposal was tearing the state Republican Party apart when Rhoden came into office. He signed a ban on eminent domain for carbon pipelines into law and put the issue to bed, at least for a while.
Rising homeowner property taxes bedeviled legislators for years before Rhoden became governor, but nobody had come up with a workable response. He needed less than two months to propose, shepherd through the legislative process and sign a bill designed to slow the increases.
Noem left behind a wreck of a prison construction plan, with a site under litigation and a revolt from legislators who didn’t like the price or the location in rural Lincoln County. Rhoden appointed his lieutenant governor, Tony Venhuizen, to lead a task force that came up with a new plan, a lower price and a different location in Sioux Falls for legislators to consider Tuesday.
Rhoden hasn’t declared himself a candidate to keep his job yet, but he has a campaign website and is traveling the state on an “Open for Opportunity” tour that’s really an extended, state-funded campaign trip.
Johnson has won nine statewide races including primaries and general elections, and he’s not likely to be outworked in a campaign. There are other announced Republican candidates — Aberdeen businessman Toby Doeden, who was at 4% in the April poll, and state House Speaker Jon Hansen, of Dell Rapids, at 2% — who could make up ground or play the role of spoiler in the primary.
A Trump endorsement for any of them would probably be a clincher. Failing that, Rhoden’s best hope is completing a successful audition for the job.
Those are the stakes for Rhoden on Tuesday, when he could clean up another Noem mess and rack up another political and policy win, or suffer a setback of his own making.
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