Rep. Dusty Johnson finished third in South Dakota’s Republican gubernatorial race this week and will not advance to the runoff primary, ending a bid that once made him an early front-runner. Gov. Larry Rhoden moved on to the next round against businessman Toby Doeden.
Johnson’s result extends a pattern that has taken shape across party lines: incumbent members of Congress leaving the House to seek statewide office and then falling short in party primaries. For Republicans, that list includes Texas’ Wesley Hunt, Texas’ Chip Roy, Georgia’s Buddy Carter and Iowa’s Randy Feenstra. Among Democrats, it includes Texas’ Jasmine Crockett, Illinois’ Raja Krishnamoorthi and Illinois’ Robin Kelly.
The South Dakota race itself had been expected to produce a clearer path for one of the early contenders, but Johnson faded as voting narrowed the field. Rhoden, who was elevated to the governorship after Kristi Noem joined the White House Cabinet, now faces Doeden in the Republican runoff primary.
The broader backdrop is a series of intraparty contests in which sitting lawmakers have traded safe House seats for statewide campaigns and come up short. In Ohio, a poll showed former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown leading appointed Republican Sen. Jon Husted 53% to 45%, a reminder that statewide races can still move quickly and punish weak assumptions about name recognition or incumbency.
For Johnson, the immediate consequence is final: he is out of the governor’s race, and the Republican contest now belongs to Rhoden and Doeden. The larger question is whether the current run of House members losing elections reflects a passing stretch of bad luck or a harder truth about lawmakers stepping up to statewide races without enough support to carry them through.
