NOTE: This is the first of two stories looking at the candidates running for South Dakota’s lone U.S. House seat.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — For the first time in three election cycles, there will be a Democrat along with a Republican candidate for U.S. House on South Dakota’s November ballot.
Republican incumbent Dusty Johnson has served as the state’s lone voice in the U.S. House since early 2019, but Sheryl Johnson of Sioux Falls wants to supplant him.
“I’m a farmer’s daughter, I’m a former Navy wife, and I’m the mother of four daughters, and I’m running for Congress because I am fed up with the fact that they don’t get anything done,” said Johnson, who has worked in education and as a small business owner.
The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022 motivates her candidacy.
“I felt very betrayed when that was overturned because it’s not about abortion to me,” Sheryl Johnson said. “It’s about a fact that it took away the woman’s right to make a decision, and I don’t think government should have the power to make decisions for women.”
As she seeks to unseat Dusty Johnson from the position he’s held in Washington for three terms, she’s hearing about inflation, education and child care as well.
“My daughter and son-in-law have an eight-month-old, and they’re currently living with us,” Sheryl Johnson said. “They just moved here. My son-in-law ended up quitting his job so that he could stay home with their little daughter because they were just struggling to find day care while they were on a waiting list to get into something.”
Voters’ opinions on these and other issues vary widely and are often enthusiastically shared. For her, the political and the personal can each stay in separate lanes.
“When you can agree to disagree on things, I think that’s great,” she said. “And I think we need a lot more of that in Congress. That you can disagree on policies, but it doesn’t make you enemies, and we have to get back to that where we can go on being friends even though we disagree.”
KELOLAND’s Dan Santella is set to sit down with Dusty Johnson on Wednesday afternoon with an ensuing report planned for Wednesday evening. Voters will hear from each candidate again in a special edition of Inside KELOLAND which will air on Oct. 12 and 13.
