In a more normal time, South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden would have easily locked down the Republican nomination before this week.
An establishment conservative, he served in the state legislature for 18 years before becoming lieutenant governor for seven years, then becoming governor when Kristi Noem joined the Trump administration last year.
He’s also a native South Dakotan who served in the state National Guard and worked as a rancher and welder before going into politics.
Any challenger to Rhoden would have needed to persuade major donors to spend money on the race in a year when they’re hoping to minimize their losses in more competitive general election races elsewhere. A candidate would have also needed to pull in thousands of smaller donors with populist ideas that capitalized on voter discontent.
But Rhoden isn’t facing a typical challenger. In Tuesday’s primary runoff, he’s facing multimillionaire Toby Doeden, an entrepreneur, real estate developer, podcaster and bitcoin investor who has put $4 million of his own money into the race.
Wealthy Americans have always sought political office.
Wealthy Americans have always sought political office. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were among the richest Americans of their day. But until recently, personal wealth wasn’t nearly as useful as a campaign asset.
That changed after the Supreme Court’s 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo, which held that candidates have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of their own money on their campaigns.
In 1992, billionaire Ross Perot became the wealthiest person to ever run for president at the time. Since then, billionaires Steve Forbes, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer and Vivek Ramaswamy have also mounted presidential campaigns that fell short, and Donald Trump has been elected twice. The short list of potential 2028 presidential contenders already includes former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.
Trump’s success demonstrated that a wealthy outsider with no political experience could capture a major party nomination. Many wealthy Republican candidates have even argued that business success is a better qualification than a long political résumé, turning inexperience into evidence that they are outsiders — something Doeden has done in South Dakota.
That creates an interesting tension. Republicans increasingly portray themselves as the party of working-class Americans while elevating candidates and advisers whose defining credential is extraordinary personal wealth. That doesn’t mean wealthy candidates can’t represent working-class voters. But it does mean the party has become more comfortable treating business success as a political qualification in its own right.
In fact, extraordinary wealth can be as much of an impediment to a successful campaign as a help.
Self-funded candidates operate under different incentives than ordinary politicians do. They don’t need donors to validate that their campaign is viable. Weak fundraising doesn’t force them to reassess. Party leaders have less leverage over them. And because they’re spending their own money, they can stay in races long after a typical candidate would have dropped out.
Those dynamics appear to be in play in South Dakota. Doeden could afford to launch a well-funded campaign with little risk and stay in the race regardless of fundraising setbacks. He’s run as an outsider, calling for the elimination of property taxes — a proposal independent analysts say would dramatically reduce state and local revenue and one that would also lower taxes on his own extensive real estate holdings. And when a poll showed him trailing the incumbent by 30 points, he dismissed it as “fake” and stuck to his messaging.
If the poll is correct, Rhoden will end up handily winning the Republican nomination in the runoff, and Doeden will join the ranks of wealthy candidates who burned their own money to run.
Doeden’s candidacy illustrates how self-funded campaigns change politics.
Even if Doeden loses badly, his candidacy illustrates how self-funded campaigns change politics. Wealth allows outsiders to bypass many of the filters that normally determine which candidates voters ever get to consider. Whether that ultimately benefits democracy is debatable. But it unquestionably changes who gets on the ballot—and forces more conventional politicians like Rhoden to campaign, spend and govern differently.
South Dakota won’t be the last place this happens. As more wealthy Americans conclude they can simply buy themselves a viable campaign, party organizations and donors will play a smaller role in deciding who reaches voters in the first place.
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