Recently I spoke with Joshua Haiar of the South Dakota Searchlight news publication. You may read the full article below or click here to read it on their website and see all the included photos.
Jim Eschenbaum was a Democrat for three decades, then switched his registration and rode a property rights movement into leadership.
South Dakota’s new Republican Party chairman is a former Democrat, but he’s been a Republican for nine years. Now he’s concerned about “Republicans In Name Only,” or RINOs, and wants to weed them out.
“RINOs are a real thing,” Jim Eschenbaum said. “People say, ‘Don’t call us RINOs.’ Well, If you’re supporting abortion or gun control in any way, or any kind of sequestering of First Amendment rights, well, that does not align with conservative principles.”
Eschenbaum is a 62-year-old Hand County commissioner and farmer. He was a registered Democrat for 32 years until he and his wife switched when Democrats nominated Hillary Clinton for president in 2016.
“We said we couldn’t align with that one, so we were already planning to vote for Trump, and we both switched and became Republicans,” he said.
Eschenbaum got more politically engaged while fighting Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed $9 billion carbon capture pipeline, which he calls a “boondoggle.” The project would transport carbon dioxide emissions from dozens of ethanol plants in five states to an underground storage site in North Dakota, where the carbon could also be used to extract oil from old wells. For the carbon it sequesters underground, the project could qualify for billions in federal tax credits for removing heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere.
The project’s need for eminent domain has motivated staunch opposition in South Dakota. Eminent domain is a method of forcing landowners to provide access to their land, in exchange for compensation determined by a court.
Members of a grassroots movement against the pipeline’s use of eminent domain have had a big impact on South Dakota politics. They helped oust 14 state Republican lawmakers in last June’s primary election; referred what pipeline critics considered a pro-pipeline law to the ballot in November, where voters rejected it; and helped pass a law earlier this year barring carbon pipeline companies from using eminent domain.
Eschenbaum was a leading figure in the ballot referendum campaign.
“That did indeed gain me a lot of public exposure,” Eschenbaum said. “I did public informational meetings all over the state before the general election.”
Eschenbaum said the people he met along the way encouraged him to run for state Republican Party chairman. Some of those same people were becoming more active in the party themselves, and were shifting the party’s power balance to members of the anti-pipeline movement.
“They said we need good, honest, outspoken leadership,” he said. “I always tell people the truth is easy to speak. It’s not tough to speak what you believe.”
The state party elects a chair during the first meeting of its state central committee in each odd-numbered year. Voters include Republican county chairs, vice-chairs, state committee members and other designated officials.
Eschenbaum was elected chairman in February and recently spoke with South Dakota Searchlight. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Many Republican donors now give money directly to causes or candidates rather than the state party. Is the state party organization relevant anymore, and why does it exist?
It is, because of the state organization, the county organizations, the county precinct committeemen and committeewomen, and the elected Republican officials in the county who are part of that county central committee.
It exists, most importantly, because of its party platform. That party platform is amended by the entire group of people, which would include precinct committeemen and committeewomen who go to the state convention.
That platform shows what the South Dakota GOP stands for, and then I think our elected officials should be held to the task of promoting and voting along the lines of that platform. And so there is a purpose.
I agree that people are funding candidates now instead of just throwing all the money to the state or state party. And I am perfectly OK with that. We don’t need any more money thrown to the state GOP than what we need to operate.
And we’ve already taken $77,000 out of the annual operating costs of the state GOP. Reggie Rhoden, Governor Rhoden’s son, was executive director and he was being paid $5,400 a month. He resigned at the meeting on February 22, when we did the elections. And we have decided thus far that we don’t need an executive director. Nobody knows that he was doing much.
What makes someone a Republican?
I think you should be a constitutional conservative. And what I mean by constitutional conservative is that you vote and represent Republicans based on the two constitutions: the South Dakota Constitution and the U.S. Constitution, which everyone raises their right hand and swears an oath to when they’re sworn in. And then our party platform, which is conservative values.
I have even proposed a South Dakota GOP scorecard. I don’t know if the state central committee will decide to do it, but it would be based on just those three principles, the two constitutions and the party platform.
How do you define the factions in the Republican Party?
Well, it’s establishment power players and power to the people.
The average Joes are realizing they have a voice. It comes from that 2024 primary. A lot of those candidates that got voted out, those incumbents that got voted out, had all kinds of money behind them from the ethanol plants and Summit Carbon Solutions. And the people got out and talked to people. This is what party politics should be. This is what government should be.
Do you want to unify Republicans?
The best thing I can do to bring them all together is be open and honest and communicative with them, and I’ve been doing that.
I feel like the South Dakota GOP has been run by just a few power players, and they really didn’t want a new voice or input. I’ve stated this so many times: They ask for our money and our vote, but they don’t want our voice. They don’t want us involved in the process, and that’s just a terrible thought when you’ve got a state central committee that’s composed of about 200 members and the bylaws.
The bylaws make it clear to me that the chairman’s job is to facilitate the operations and decision-making of the state central committee. The state central committee should have the power, not the chairman or any other executive director or anything. The state central committee’s discussions and decision-making should guide the party.
And that’s what I ran on. I ran on a campaign of power to the people and being accessible to the people, and so far it’s going good.
Some of these counties that did not want me elected are starting to talk to me. There was quite a while there that they didn’t like this farmer from Hand County getting in amongst the politicians.
But I said our state motto for God’s sake is “Under God the People Rule,” and some of these politicians, they get elected to office, they get a fat head about what it is they want to do or who they want to benefit, or using government to do business, and that’s not what government is intended to be. It’s supposed to be a minimal service to the people, and it just keeps growing and growing and growing and getting more authoritarian and powerful, and that’s not what our founders intended it to be, in my opinion.
Why were you a Democrat? Why did you become a Republican?
My wife and I were both raised in Catholic Democrat families. And what do young people do if they haven’t really gotten themselves involved in politics in high school and started making decisions of which way they’re going to go? You register the same as your parents were.
Well, as abortion became a bigger topic, my wife and I both agreed we wouldn’t support any Democrat that supported abortion.
The Democratic Party that we aligned with was more of that JFK kind of a Democrat that worked for the working class and common people. The party got away from that. They just got further and further away from it. They just keep stepping to the left even more all the time and supporting all kinds of foolishness that the Republican Party does not support.
Is there anything you’d like to add?
I’m extremely involved as chairman — like I said, responsive to people. I’m trying to make every Lincoln Day Dinner [a fundraising event for county Republican parties] across the state that I can possibly get to.
These are complaints that I heard about the previous chair or previous administration. You’d have a Lincoln Day Dinner, give plenty of notice for it, and they’re like, “No, very busy that day.”
If you take a job like this, you have to commit the time that it takes to do it right. I don’t know why that didn’t happen previously. It could be speculated probably two or three different ways.
I said when I took this job, “I will not be a butt kisser to any politicians. I’m working for the people to elect good politicians.”
Just because you’re elected to office currently does not guarantee you’re going to get reelected to office again. It just doesn’t.
