Winter Timing May Reduce the Turnout : Second-Earliest Primary Puts South Dakota in News

The steadfast adage of news is this: If you are first at something, get ready for attention. Lots of it. Maybe more than you deserve. If you are second, however, forget it. Go fishing. Take a nap. News you are not. After all, whoever heard of “second come, second served” or “second among equals?”

Therefore, headlines in the 1988 presidential campaign rarely come to South Dakota.

Yet as the state with the second-earliest presidential primary--on Feb. 23--South Dakota is increasingly important on the political chessboard. Candidates for President are growing attentive in anticipation of that frosty day when, for a short time, it will not be Iowa or New Hampshire or the Super Tuesday states of the South in the news. It will be South Dakota.

Democrat Gary Hart was not back in the presidential race two days before he was working the lunch crowd at Minerva’s restaurant here Thursday. On the Republican side, front-runners George Bush and Bob Dole have visited here more than a dozen times between them. Curiously enough, Bush and Dole both chose South Dakota as the state to begin their 1988 television advertising campaigns.

‘Wait-and-See’ Voters

“People here are really getting a kick out of it. I’m hearing people tell me, ‘I think I’ll wait until I see all the candidates until I decide,’ ” said Speaker of the South Dakota House of Representatives Debbie Anderson, who is running Vice President Bush’s campaign in the state.

All this is a treat for a state accustomed to the lampoon, even within its own high plains region. The governor of neighboring Minnesota was once quoted as saying: “My slogan is, ‘When you wake up in South Dakota, you’re still in South Dakota.’ ”

The 1988 election begins with GOP caucus votes in Hawaii on Jan. 27 and the Republican state convention in Michigan on Jan. 29 and 30. Kansas Republicans will caucus the first week of February, followed by the two-party caucuses in Iowa the night of Feb. 8. Primary voting begins Feb. 16 in New Hampshire.

By and large, Democratic contenders have been busy trying to make their names known in Iowa and New Hampshire or for the delegate-rich, 20-state balloting on March 8--the so-called Super Tuesday primaries. That has meant limited and occasional efforts here, such as Hart’s recent, quick visit.

Dole-Bush Contest

The more advanced and perhaps crucial race is shaping up on the Republican side between Kansas Sen. Dole and Bush--the two GOP candidates who have come to find themselves fighting for the agricultural heartland.

“The early calendar is not unfriendly to a Midwesterner,” Dole tells his audiences.

Ahead in the polls in Iowa, Dole, of course, would like to buttress a good showing there with a victory here and head into the Southern elections in March with oomph .

“It gives us an opportunity to keep the ball rolling,” said Dole’s regional political director, Floyd Brown.

For Bush, any loss and certainly any succession of losses threatens to paint him as a loser. The challenge of his candidacy is to beat everyone from the start, wherever they choose to pick the fight. For now, that happens to be South Dakota.

Campaign officials both here and in Washington headquarters agreed that Dole has been the favorite in South Dakota and probably still holds an edge. Dole is endorsed by Gov. George S. Michelson, the state’s one GOP senator, Larry Pressler, and former Sen. James Abdnor.

The Dole campaign’s emphasis on federal aid to agriculture has an attentive audience, at least in the eastern part of the state where subsidized crops are grown.

Farm Aid Issue

Some Republicans have suggested that the $26-billion-a-year federal supports for crops such as corn and wheat are less important in the rangelands of the western part of the state, where cattle ranchers do not enjoy such direct cash subsidies.

Dole plays heavily on his Midwestern background in television advertisements that began airing Thursday night.

Against scenes of a rippling wheat field and small-town America, Dole says: “Growing up here is the greatest lesson you could ever learn. It’s a lesson in character, stamina, and a concern for the needs of others. It’s a lesson you take with you all your life. . . .”

Dole was drawn into the advertising war when Bush began airing two commercials Dec. 3. One carries a tailor-made message about the need for economic development, a roundly popular issue in South Dakota. The other is a biographical look at Bush--his war record, his career as an oil wildcatter, his family and his high-level government jobs.

“How does a man get to this point in his life? How does one man come so far?” asks the announcer. “The more you learn how George Bush came this far, the more you realize that perhaps no one in this century is better prepared to be the President of the United States.”

Bush is endorsed by former Gov. Bill Janklow and the current lieutenant governor, Walter D. Miller.

Kemp, Robertson Efforts

Besides the front-runners, two other Republicans have signaled a determination to fight for South Dakota--Rep. Jack Kemp of New York and former television evangelist Pat Robertson.

Republicans interviewed here said they believe Kemp’s strength will depend on whether he can breathe life into his candidacy in the Iowa and New Hampshire contests. Robertson looms as a mystery here, as elsewhere.

“I few months ago I would have said Robertson wasn’t likely to do much. Now I’m not so sure,” said Dole’s state campaign director, Dwight Adams. “If there is a blizzard or something, we could be up against the intensity factor (of Robertson’s religious followers).”

Voter turnout on Feb. 23, and turnout in terms of good publicity for South Dakota, are two of the most often pondered variables in politics here these days.

In past elections, the state had a very much overlooked primary in June. The Legislature responded by voting to move the date up, hoping to expand South Dakota’s influence and draw favorable attention.

Both seemed to have occurred. Local officials now find themselves on a gratifying first-name basis with would-be presidents. Crowds in small towns are typically twice or three times as large as would show up in the more blase Iowa.

Anchormen in the Snow

Yet boosters still wonder what will happen when South Dakota finds itself in the national news in the middle of the famous high plains winter. One legislator put it: “Are we going to have some television guy leaning into a blizzard at a 45-degree angle, saying, ‘Here we are in South Dakota?’ ”

And will the people of the state plunge into the teeth of a storm themselves to vote in large numbers?

Dole’s field staff here already has completed most of its canvassing because, as Adams put it, “I couldn’t count on people going door to door in South Dakota in February.”

And the voter turnout?

“I don’t know. Maybe it will be the candidate who has the most snowmobiles on Feb. 23,” Adams said with a shrug.