The shifting landscape of South Dakota Republican politics went seismic on Feb. 22 in Pierre, when county leaders voted property rights advocate Jim Eschenbaum as the new chairperson of the state party’s central committee.
No one sensed the moment’s gravity more than Eschenbaum, a retired farmer from Hand County whose work as a county commissioner steered him into a carbon pipeline debate that has shaped the party’s priorities and clouded its future path.
“A year ago, the chance of me being chair of the South Dakota GOP was zero, absolute zero,” said Eschenbaum, 62. “Ever since then, I’ve been wondering, ‘What happened here? What changed in South Dakota politics when a Hand County farmer ends up as chair of the GOP when it has basically been run by establishment power players all these years?”
That’s a pressing question in the hallways of the state Capitol in Pierre and corporate boardrooms in Sioux Falls and Rapid City. It has already influenced state laws and elections and could have ramifications for economic development and the role that party machinery plays in fundraising and candidate recruitment.
“I don’t just care about landowners – I am a landowner,” Gov. Larry Rhoden said in signing House Bill 1052, which prohibits the use of eminent domain for pipelines that carry carbon dioxide, a major populist priority in addition to pausing a proposed $825 million men's prison in rural Lincoln County.
Rhoden was lieutenant governor when then-Gov. Kristi Noem signed 2024 legislation viewed as pro-pipeline for ethanol production. After taking the top job when Noem left for Washington in February, he declared "failure is not an option" when it came to carrying out the prison plan.
Rhoden has now called for a "reset" of the prison project after the final funding bill failed, while HB 1052 has forced pipeline company Summit Carbon Solutions to backtrack on its vision for South Dakota.
Stu Whitney
The swiftness with which populist Republicans used these issues to spur a grassroots movement and seize control of legislative and party leadership has rattled pro-business moderates as positioning begins for 2026 statewide elections.
With leaders such as Speaker of the House Jon Hansen and Aberdeen businessman Toby Doeden, whose Dakota First Action Political Action Committee helped sink establishment incumbents in 2024 legislative primaries, the changing tides have Rhoden and other formerly entrenched Republicans playing defense.
“It’s not clear to me that there is a strong consensus movement on what the pro-business wing ought to be doing,” said Sioux Falls lawyer Dave Knudson, who served as a South Dakota Republican senator from 2003-11, including four years as majority leader. “I think there is a fair amount of disorganization and searching for some direction that isn't apparent at the moment.”
State GOP committee faces money woes
Part of the establishment strategy involves waiting to see if the populist movement becomes the dog that caught the car, losing steam and direction with many of its aims achieved and party institutions weakened.
Eschenbaum took the reins of a state central committee that raised literally zero dollars in January and has about $57,000 in its account, roughly $20,000 less than the much-maligned South Dakota Democratic Party.
The state GOP’s executive director, Reggie Rhoden, announced he is leaving that administrative role. It could be filled by volunteers or with more involvement from county officials, said Eschenbaum, who replaced former state Sen. John Wiik as party chair after months of discontent at the precinct levels.
South Dakota’s congressional leaders in Washington are not reliant on state party financial support – U.S. Sen. John Thune has $16 million in his campaign coffers and is not up for re-election until 2028 – but are mindful of action in the political trenches.
One of Thune’s aides met with Eschenbaum recently to get his thoughts on state politics, and U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson is watching closely as part of an expected run for governor in 2026. Johnson has more than $5 million in his campaign war chest and is weighing a race that also could include Rhoden, Attorney General Marty Jackley and a populist contender, most likely Doeden or Hansen.
“The proof is in the pudding,” Johnson told News Watch when asked about state party leadership changes. “Obviously, South Dakota is stronger when we've got a strong Republican Party. (Eschenbaum) and his team have some big challenges ahead of them. But I think we're going to know in the next three to six months if they’re in position to pull it together and start to make good things happen, or if they won't get that done.”
Politics 'more combative' since Trump
At first glance, Eschenbaum seems an unlikely choice to lead a movement fueled in part by the ascendance of President Donald Trump in the Republican Party.
He comes from a large Catholic family that farmed south of Miller, 40 miles northwest of Huron, and was part of what used to be a strong coalition of rural Democrats in South Dakota.
Eschenbaum voted for Barack Obama in 2008 because he thought electing the first Black president would help address racial tensions. He was ready to vote Republican in 2012, upset with runaway spending following the Great Recession but was unimpressed with GOP candidate Mitt Romney's campaign and supported Obama again.
It was Trump’s resonance in rural America, combined with the leftward drift of the national Democratic Party, that thrust Eschenbaum into the Republican ranks. After being appointed in 2019 to fill a spot on the Hand County Commission, he ran successfully as a Republican to keep the job in 2020 and 2024.
After Trump's loss in 2020, Eschenbaum resisted the call from election skeptics to challenge voting results, defending the use of machine tabulators to count ballots amid cries of systemic fraud from groups such as South Dakota Canvassing.
The issue of property rights held more sway with him, particularly when Summit Carbon Solutions applied in 2022 for a permit in South Dakota to build an $8.9 billion pipeline that would carry liquified carbon dioxide gas from more than 50 ethanol plants in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota to be stored deep underground in North Dakota.
In addition to voluntary easements, the process involved using eminent domain to get a court order to force landowners to allow access to the property in return for just compensation, often in conflict with county ordinances or setbacks.
The fight against Summit, which was denied a permit by the Public Utilities Commission in 2023, found life in town halls, Facebook groups and precinct committee elections, the sort of roll-up-your-shirtsleeves political activism that caught some traditionalists off guard.
“The Trumpian, populist style of politics had downstream effects, and so you have people in local politics who are aping that same style,” said Jon Schaff, a political science professor at Northern State University in Aberdeen. “That has altered the Republican Party in South Dakota to some extent, not just ideologically but stylistically. It’s become more combative, and the pipeline issue served as a galvanizing force.”
Pipeline stance serves as litmus test
When the 2023 state Legislature passed Senate Bill 201 and called it the “Landowner Bill of Rights,” boasting a series of property protections for pipeline negotiations, Eschenbaum wasn’t sold.
He and other opponents said the legislation paved the way for PUC approval of the pipeline by usurping the regulatory authority of counties.
"I feel like they just stuck a title on there to make it smell all rosy and pretty," he told News Watch at the time. "I don't think it's intended to be for the landowners in any way, shape or form.”
He formed the South Dakota Property Rights and Local Control Alliance along with Rapid City legislator Tina Mulally, who is now treasurer of the South Dakota GOP. Fueled by volunteer energy and small-dollar donations, the group gathered enough signatures to place Referred Law 21 on the November ballot, giving voters a chance to either keep or kill Senate Bill 201.
The results spoke loudly: Nearly 60% voted to strike down the legislation, making "No on 21" the only successful citizen-generated measure in the 2024 election.
That came after Doeden and others using pipeline votes as a litmus test for the 2024 Republican primaries. Those elections saw the removal of 14 sitting GOP legislators, laying the groundwork for populists to gain leadership roles in Pierre and more influence with the state central committee.
Joel Rosenthal, who served six terms as GOP party chair before stepping down in 2003, said the advent of digital media and political action committees has changed how state parties operate down to the county and precinct level.
“The Republican Party is the voters, the people who go and register and say, ‘I’m a Republican,’” said Rosenthal. “(The state party) is just the organizing committee. And our job, once a person wins a primary, is to get that person elected. We aren’t judgmental about what their views are. That’s up the voters. But now you’ve got more people going to the state convention, and interest groups can recruit these (precinct) candidates, and you’ve got a lot of activists pushing a platform. So there really isn’t much need for the party, but they’ve taken over the party apparatus.”
Reform advocate: System skews results
Joe Kirby, a Sioux Falls businessman and government reform advocate, resists the notion that property rights spawned a significant political movement in South Dakota.
He sees the shift as a symptom of one-party rule, illustrated by the Republicans' 96-9 advantage over Democrats in the Legislature and the fact that no Democrat has won a statewide election in South Dakota since 2008.
Kirby was a driving force behind Amendment H on the 2024 ballot, which would have established “top-two” primaries for governor, Congress and state legislative and county races, with all registered voters eligible to participate.
The idea was that open primaries produce officeholders more reflective of the general electorate, rather than incentivizing candidates to take extreme positions to win a partisan primary. The measure was defeated, receiving just 34% of the vote.
Currently in South Dakota, a voter registered with a political party can only vote in that party's primary. Those registered as independent or non-affiliated can participate in Democratic primaries but not Republican contests.
There are 320,285 registered Republicans in South Dakota, according to the latest tally, compared to 145,654 Democrats and 159,970 listed as independent or no party affiliation.
Turnout for 2024 primary elections was historically low, with 101,062 ballots cast out of 591,153 registered voters for a percentage of 17%. That was below the state's primary turnout in presidential cycles of 2020 (28%), 2016 (22%) and 2012 (21%).
"We've got a system that's designed to work well within a competitive two-party system," said Kirby. "But it's not going to work when you've got a single party in control. What we're seeing is that our flawed election system allows single-issue and special interest groups to have an outsized influence on state politics."
Eschenbaum said he has heard this "squeaky wheel" theory before. He regards it as an attempt to dismiss groundswell efforts as amateurish and not representative of the larger electorate.
His message is simple: Dismiss the populist movement at your peril.
"Politics are alive and well in South Dakota right now," said Eschenbaum. "People are not satisfied with just casting a vote and assuming that everything's going to be OK. That doesn't work anymore. You've got people that run for office that have every intention of listening to the voice of South Dakotans, and you've got people that run for office with the intention of doing business. That second group is going to have an awful hard time getting reelected."
This story was produced by South Dakota News Watch, an independent, nonprofit organization. Read more stories and donate at sdnewswatch.org and sign up for an email every few days to get stories as soon as they're published. Contact Stu Whitney at stu.whitney@sdnewswatch.org.
