Tamara Grove, senator-elect for District 26 in the South Dakota Legislature, poses at a Lower Brule Sioux Tribe community center in front of artwork by Dion Stands and Looks Back. Courtesy photo
Some of South Dakota’s tribal areas have long been considered Democratic strongholds so reliable that some GOP political observers had written some seats off as all but unwinnable.
But Democratic seats in those communities are no longer a given. District 26, which includes parts of the Lower Brule, Crow Creek and Rosebud Sioux reservations, voted last Tuesday to send a Republican to the state Senate for the first time in more than a decade.
Tamara Grove of Lower Brule beat incumbent Democratic Sen. Shawn Bordeaux of Mission on Tuesday night, with an unofficial tally of 57%-43%. Bordeaux has been a lawmaker for 10 years.
The last Republican senator to serve in District 26 was John Koskan, who served as Assistant Majority Leader in his final term in 2006.
Grove, who grew up in Miller, moved to Lower Brule with her husband a few years ago from the Sioux Falls area to found a church called The Hope Center. The couple has since worked with community members on issues like food sovereignty, Grove said, having planted a large community garden on the church grounds.
“We connected with leadership in some of the biggest communities in Todd County,” Grove said. “That’s really what it was about: building those relationships.”
She said she worked to meet as many people as possible and helped get voters registered in the runup to the election. Grove said she has disagreements on policy with constituents in the majority-Democrat district but found common ground on others.
She found harmony on the issue of abortion with many tribal elders, she said, who shared her opposition to Amendment G. Voters rejected that abortion rights measure last Tuesday.
“Perhaps there may be younger members, but more traditional (people) and elders do not agree with abortion,” Grove said.
Grove’s ascension signals shifting political winds in the district, Bordeaux told South Dakota Searchlight.
The Democrat bested a Republican candidate named Joel Koskan in 2022, who was indicted on child abuse charges just days before that year’s general election. Republican leadership quickly distanced itself from Koskan, but the indictment came too late for Koskan’s name to be removed from the ballot.
Koskan, who’s serving a five-year sentence for incest, pulled 42% of the vote.
Grove may not have generational roots in District 26, but she carried no such baggage with her into the 2024 general election contest.
“It’s that red wave they were predicting over the past few years,” Bordeaux said of his loss.
In the past, including 2022, it wasn’t uncommon for Bordeaux or his predecessor in the Senate, former Sen. Troy Heinert, to go to bed on election night behind as votes from tribal areas trickled in.
“He would be behind, and he’d have to catch up,” Bordeaux said. “I had hoped to have that same experience.”
That pattern held true for Bordeaux in 2022. He was losing to Koskan early in the evening on election night in 2022, but came back when tallies from Democrat-friendly precincts were added to the vote totals.
Pat Powers, a longtime GOP blogger in South Dakota, had predicted that Bordeaux would return to the legislature in 2025. The senator has a long history of public service in the area and had the advantage of incumbency.
Reservation areas have been so solidly Democratic for so long, Powers said, that last Tuesday’s results in District 26 “shocked the bejesus out of me.”
The results from last Tuesday show that Democrats can no longer take state legislative seats in tribal communities as a given, he said.
“It’s been exclusively Democrat for so many years, so for Republicans to make inroads like that, they had to have completely abandoned their get out the vote effort,” he said.
Republicans gained strength in the state legislature in this year’s general election, with the total number of Democrats in either chamber falling to nine compared to 11 who served in 2023 and 2024. Two Democrats lost seats. Democrats lost a third seat to a Republican who ran for a seat left open by a term-limited Democrat.
Democrats did turn a longtime Republican seat in the House, however. Nicole Uhre-Balk is the first Democrat elected in Rapid City’s District 32 in 18 years.
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This story originally appeared on South Dakota Searchlight on November 8, 2024. It is published under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-ND 4.0).
South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on Facebook and X.
