By 
By Stu Whitney
South Dakota News Watch
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.
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.
U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson is considered a possible candidate for governor of South Dakota. Photo by S.D. Newswatch.
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.
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.”
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 [email protected].
