Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson, South Dakota’s sole member of the House, will depart the post to run for governor.
In a launch video released Monday, Johnson highlighted his record in Congress, including “cutting trillions in wasteful spending, standing with President Trump to secure our border and finally getting tough on China.”
“Those were important fights to build a better country for our kids,” Johnson said, “but their future doesn’t begin in some faraway place. It begins here, at home, in South Dakota. That’s why we need to hit the gas and give them a clear path to a bright future.”
Johnson, 48, joins what’s becoming a crowded Republican primary in the deeply conservative state, which hasn’t elected a Democratic governor since 1974 — the longest gubernatorial drought for either party nationwide.
Republicans already in the race include South Dakota House Speaker Jon Hansen and businessman Toby Doeden, who weighed challenging Johnson in a House primary last cycle before deciding against it. The incumbent governor, Larry Rhoden, has yet to publicly state whether he intends to seek a full term. Rhoden ascended to the governorship earlier this year, succeeding Kristi Noem, who resigned to become Donald Trump’s Homeland Security secretary.
Johnson has been a mainstay in South Dakota politics for decades. He was a policy adviser to Gov. Mike Rounds, now the state’s junior senator, and first won public office in 2004 at the age of 28 with his election to the state’s Public Utilities Commission. He resigned shortly after winning reelection in 2010 to become chief of staff to Gov. Dennis Daugaard during his first term.
After a stint in the private sector, Johnson returned to the political fray during the 2018 cycle and succeeded Noem as the state’s at-large member of the House. (Noem was elected governor that year.)
A traditional conservative, Johnson has embraced a solution-oriented mindset in Congress. He is the co-chair of the Main Street Caucus, a group of more than 80 lawmakers who call themselves “pragmatic conservatives.” He also serves on the Agriculture and Transportation and Infrastructure committees, as well as the Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.
Growing up in the state capital of Pierre, Johnson felt close to government his whole life, he previously recalled in an interview with CQ Roll Call. His middle school was across from the seat of state government, and he remembered living in the small town of only 14,000 and having three state Supreme Court justices in the pews around him at church on Sunday mornings.
“I just think there was always a sense that, despite the fact that I was a poor kid, that government was accessible to me — that there was an opportunity to have an impact,” Johnson said.
Johnson’s vacant House seat is likely to attract a large field of Republican candidates in a state where winning the primary would be tantamount to winning the general election. Johnson won a fourth term last fall by 44 points as Trump carried the state by 29 points.
A high-profile candidate already seems poised to enter the GOP contest. South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley told The Argus Leader last week ahead of Johnson’s announcement that he planned to run.
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