National Democrats just invested $1 million to support Rick Weiland, their candidate in South Dakota’s U.S. Senate race. Everyone is buzzing about a Survey USA poll showing former GOP governor Mike Rounds suddenly holding a narrow lead in a three-way race. The Survey USA poll has Rounds at 35 percent, former senator Larry Pressler at 32 percent as an independent candidate, and Weiland at 27 percent. Even though Republicans say their internal polls still have their candidate with a double-digit lead, there is no doubt Pressler’s presence has made them nervous.
But the maverick former Senator, who served from 1979 to 1997, just handed Republicans a gift. Pressler has represented a major headache for them because older voters fondly remember him serving in the Senate as a Republican casting mostly conservative votes. But in an interview with Washington’s Hill newspaper yesterday, Pressler made clear that his views have shifted to the left.
While he didn’t say which party caucus he would join in the Senate, he did say he’d be a “friend of Obama,” and repeated his earlier statement that he had voted for him in both his presidential runs. Pressler is also proud of his support for Obamacare, calling it a law South Dakota “needs.” As for budgetary issues, he indicated support for raising taxes on the “wealthy”: “We’re a big, rich country and we don’t need to gouge Social Security, we don’t need to gouge education, we don’t need to close the EPA. We have to meet our responsibilities here at home.”
You can just see the Republican attack ads being lined up for takeoff. Obamacare is unpopular in South Dakota and Obama has less than 35 percent of state residents considering themselves as “approving” of him, much less being his friend. Without much money of his own to defend himself, you can bet much of Pressler’s current Republican support will melt away and most of it is unlikely to transfer to Democrat Weiland.