COUNTERPOINT | Democratic housekeeping paramount to party growth
Guest column by Sharon Schulz-Elsing, South Dakota Democratic Party executive committee member
A friend recently gave me a piece of sound advice: “Just because you’re invited to a street fight doesn’t mean you have to participate.”
When a riot-starter drags you into the street, though, you don’t have to light their Molotov cocktail, or help their fists find the fastest path to your face.
As one of two elected representatives to the South Dakota Democratic Party Executive Board from Region 3, I work for and with the elected Democratic leaders of local legislative Districts 9, 10, 11, 14 and 15 in Minnehaha County. Together, we recruit, support and work to elect candidates committed to fair, effective government here in the Sioux Falls metro and across the state.
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I serve at their pleasure and as a steward of the Democratic Party locally and at the state level. I am and should be held accountable for my performance by those I represent.
Local people doing local groundwork voted me in. It’s their prerogative to vote me out. I respect the results of properly conducted elections —especially when everyone who can participate does participate.
In Region 3, the buck stops with me, and with my fellow representative.
In the long leadup to the November 2024 general election, Democratic leaders from the five local districts that make up our region are already hard at work on candidate and volunteer trainings, community building and campaign events within their separate districts and in conjunction with the broader Minnehaha County Democratic Party.
Unfortunately, the fruits of that hard work are being overshadowed by the ongoing media blitz of a former local party official. Sheldon Osborn was recently recalled from the position of Region 3 Representative to the SDDP Executive Board in a collective action by a clear and overwhelming majority of local Democratic leaders from these five legislative districts, all themselves duly elected, and whom we were both tasked to serve.
They and leaders across the state have held front-row seats to years-long patterns of behavior that precipitated the petition to recall: hijacked meetings, browbeating, malicious gossip and ugly innuendoes that target the reputations and livelihoods of other party leaders.
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