Politicians who are re-elected know that when their personal views differ from those of their constituents, they often need to vote for the people they represent, putting their personal inclinations aside. However, Representative Doug Post has found an alternative to negotiating this moral dilemma by ignoring the majority of his constituents, instead voting for his personal preferences.
For example, District 7 is comprised primarily of the city of Brookings, a university town. As the largest business in Brookings with 2,079 employees (including 649 faculty) and 11518 students (https://www.sdstate.edu/office-president/university-facts ), SDSU dominates both the population and workforce of Brookings. However, Mr. Post supported SB 147 – the ban of unions in the state university system, a move that negatively impacts university faculty. To re-emphasize: in the city housing the largest university in the state, Doug Post voted for the bill that was vehemently opposed by its faculty.
Another move that underlines Post’s disinclination to support higher education was his opposition to SB 72 that would have created a need-based scholarship program. The Brookings Register reported on Feb. 18 that Post was against the bill since “students who have to work to pay for school put more effort into it.” Contrary to Rep. Post’s beliefs, universities have actually generated large amounts of research-based knowledge on this topic and the results were crucial in convincing every other state in the union to establish a need-based scholarship program https://www.plaintalk.net/local_news/article_7ac4ab1e-e6bb-11e9-83dd-1bd17d1d1cfd.html. Once again, South Dakota is the lone outlier in its refusal to support something that would improve our educational system, and Doug Post helped keep us there. For 13 years at SDSU, I ran a federally funded need-based scholarship program. Regular student surveys underscored that students who recognized that their scholarship allows them to work fewer hours typically put that extra time into their studies making them better students, better prepared for the workforce, and more likely to graduate.
Another illustration of Post’s poor representation of Brookings was his sponsorship of SB 54, the so-called “ban on bans” (removing municipalities’ right to ban plastic bags) during a time when the Brookings City Council was actively discussing ways to reduce or eliminate the use of single use plastics in the city.
Additionally, in the last three years, Brookings has gained a reputation for being an LGBTQ friendly community, having been ranked as the best such city in South Dakota by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and having earned a perfect MEI score from them for the last two years. I believe that is something Brookings should be proud of, but apparently Mr. Post would like to see us bumped off of that list, having cosponsored (and voted for) HB 1057, the bill that proposed to ban physicians from treating transgender children with gender-affirming care.
And finally, Post co-sponsored the bizarre SCR 602 “To invite responsible gun owners from Virginia to relocate to South Dakota.”
I am a lifelong Democrat, but in 2018 I voted for Republicans V.J. Smith and Tim Reed because I believed that they would put the interests of Brookings first and faithfully represent the voters of District 7, and they did not disappoint me.
It may not be possible to undo the damage that Doug Post has done in his first term, but it is certainly within our power to make it his last term. If Mr. Post decides to run for a second term in District 7, I urge you to vote for a candidate who actually represents the best interests of our community.
