Thursday,  June 05, 2014 • Vol. 16--No. 322 • 17 of 30

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vote.
• Daugaard and his campaign manager said on Tuesday their strategy is to focus on Daugaard's work as governor during his campaign.
• In a call with reporters on Wednesday Wismer said competition is good for state government but Democrats have been regularly defeated and outnumbered in South Dakota. She says some women on the campaign trail have told her they appreciate having a female candidate. She views her status as a Democrat and a woman, both minorities, as advantageous.
• Women have been on the gubernatorial ballot in South Dakota before, but only for a third party. Alice Lorraine Daly ran with no party affiliation in 1922, two years after women first earned the right to vote in the U.S.
• Daugaard defeated a female challenger Tuesday: former state Rep. Lora Hubble of Sioux Falls.
• South Dakotans have sent two women Senators to Washington, the last one serving in 1948.
• Senate race aside, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, who served from 2004 to 2011 as the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from South Dakota, said she's happy to see another landmark for women in South Dakota politics.
• "Whenever women candidates can run strategic and successful campaigns that inspire voters it can have an enormously positive impact, particularly for the political socialization of our younger citizens, girls and boys both," she wrote in an email.
• South Dakota's second female U.S. Representative, Kristi Noem took the seat in 2011 and will face Democrat Corinna Robinson in the fall general election.
• Like their male counterparts, women candidates also sometimes generate controversy in politics. Annette Bosworth, a candidate for U.S. Senate, not only lost the Republican primary Tuesday, but was charged Wednesday with six counts of perjury and six counts of filing false documents related to election campaign laws, the state attorney general's office said. Bosworth said the charges are politically motivated.
• Wismer beat out Joe Lowe for the Democratic nomination. She said she's glad there was a primary to draw attention to the race.
• She said there hasn't been enough competition in state government recently. The Republicans have more than a two-thirds majority in the state House and Senate and other major offices. There have only been five Democratic governors in the state's history, and no Democrat has been elected governor in the last 40 years.
• "Democrats have been beaten down for a long time. And we have a lot of work to do," Wismer said. "We fully understand the challenge."

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