Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight
Some of the political postcards mailed to South Dakota voters in the week ahead of Tuesday’s runoff election for the Republican nomination for governor are financed by a national group that received all of its recent contributions from a Pennsylvania billionaire.
Federal Election Commission records show that the School Freedom Fund political action committee has raised $15 million since last year from billionaire and Republican mega-donor Jeffrey Yass, whose net worth is an estimated $67.4 billion. Yass is an investment trading firm owner, TikTok investor and advocate of school-choice options, including public funding to help children attend private schools.
School Freedom Fund is a type of political action committee known as a super PAC, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money as long as it doesn’t coordinate with candidates.
School Freedom Fund’s treasurer, Adam Rozanzky, did not immediately respond to a Searchlight message asking about the group’s motivation for getting involved in a South Dakota campaign.
Despite School Freedom Fund’s name, two postcards it sent to South Dakota voters do not mention schools or education. Instead, they characterize Gov. Larry Rhoden as a “big taxin’” politician for several actions throughout his career as governor and previously as a legislator, without providing context.
The postcards say, for example, that Rhoden “raised our sales taxes three times.”
Rhoden did sign three sales tax bills into law earlier this year. One uses revenue from a previously scheduled increase in the state sales tax rate to lower the school-imposed portion of homeowner property taxes, another creates an optional county sales tax to be applied toward homeowner property tax reduction, and the third creates an optional sales tax that cities can use temporarily to fund special projects such as building an arena.
Rhoden faces Aberdeen businessman Toby Doeden in Tuesday’s runoff election. The winner will advance to the Nov. 3 general election to face Democratic nominee Dan Ahlers.