Q&A: Retiring lobbyist says South Dakota Capitol environment is increasingly hostile

The environment in Pierre today is “more strident” than it was when David Owen began lobbying South Dakota lawmakers in 1998. Much has changed since then, Owen said, but that’s been the biggest shift.

Owen said Pierre’s deeply divided political environment, particularly among Republicans, is one where policy debates turn personal. He describes it as “a cancer in the system.”

“We used to have battles, take the vote, then go on and see each other at dinner. Those days are gone,” Owen said.  

Owen, 70, is retiring. He’s been president of the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce and Industry for nearly three decades, representing the state’s business interests in and out of the Capitol building. Before that, he worked for various Midwest chambers, including in Kansas and Montana.

Owen’s favorite part of the job has always been explaining the policymaking process, whether to state lawmakers or a boardroom of business leaders. He’s known for his sharp wit and policy knowledge, and has earned a reputation for occasionally breaking from the pack, especially when compromise or principle demanded it.

Ahead of his August exit from professional life, Owen sat down with South Dakota Searchlight to reflect on the art of lobbying, shifts in the Legislature, and what he sees as both the promise and peril of South Dakota politics. 

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What made you interested in lobbying lawmakers?

I’ve always been interested in policy and politics. So I chose chambers that were involved in those kinds of issues. 

I was going to be a teacher. And what I like about what I’ve done is that I teach every day. 

I teach legislators the perspective of the chamber, which gets difficult at times. And I have to teach my board about the issues and pressures around us. Because my board’s full of really smart people, successful business people, who get frustrated with the ups and downs of politics. 

What is the biggest misconception about lobbying?

There’s this idea that the lobbyists always win.

We do have a tremendous advantage over citizens who come to the Legislature. It’s something I’m uneasy about. A bill has its hearing, and then they vote on the bill. That means a lot of citizens show up to say “Me too” and bring their concerns. They’ve got their piece of paper. They’ve never done this before. They’re really nervous. 

Meanwhile, the paid lobbyists, including the one you’re talking to, already have a pretty good idea what the vote’s going to be, because we’re there all day. We catch legislators in the hall. We don’t bribe anybody, but we’re familiar with them. 

South Dakota is increasingly becoming pay-to-play. They do fundraisers and we have a political action committee, but legislators are independent enough that we don’t have the kind of control over them that the public seems to think. Otherwise, nobody would lose.

This year, I was talking to some of the freshmen legislators who had never served before. 

I heard from like five of them, the same answer that was pretty different than in the past. I asked the question, “What prompted you to run?”

I heard more about concerns about “society” and how they thought they could help straighten out “the culture” by being in the Legislature. That’s a big task. That brings you to introducing things like school vouchers. That brings you to thinking the Ten Commandments in every classroom will help structure a moral code that will solve some of these social problems. 

And there are two influential lobbying groups up there, we’ve got more, but two groups in particular, that have added to the schism: the abortion people and the gun people. They don’t reach across any aisle. 

Other lobbying groups, like the chamber, are involved in all kinds of business. We’re involved in a whole bunch of issues. We’ve got lobbyists that are banging on each other on one issue, working together on another. The abortion people don’t do that. The NRA doesn’t do that. Instead, they send nasty postcards out. 

You used to be a Republican and later registered as an independent. Why?

What finally got me to pull the trigger on leaving the party was Merrick Garland’s proposed nomination to the Supreme Court, him not getting a hearing. Because Republicans were all saying you can’t do this when there’s a presidential election. 

And then, with unbelievable speed, closer to the election than that, Republicans got Amy Coney Barrett confirmed. And that was perfectly OK.

I just thought, “I don’t think we have any principles here.” 

I had run ballot campaigns 12, 13 times in two states by then. I get roughness. I get things getting ugly. But I’d like to think that we have some principles that we will stand by, and that just flushed it out of me. 

How has the business of lobbying itself changed?

My wife, Debra, who had been a lobbyist for the local chamber, was recently terminated. So, she spent some time as a contract lobbyist. 

And I now understand this whole game of contract lobbying better. So, I don’t know if I’m noticing changes or if I’m better educated.

In the world of contract lobbying, you have two camps. You have a camp where people are coming to certain lobbyists because they have a reputation of being very effective. And they charge a certain range, starting around $20,000 and it goes up. And then some people are just starting, kind of looking for clients.

It’s interesting to me the number of out-of-state groups, national groups, that have some agenda and are hiring these contract lobbyists. 

There’s more people with money forming groups, that in turn hire lobbyists to do, quite honestly, some fairly obscure crap. 

For example, another lobbyist reached out to me, and he had a group of trailer manufacturers who wanted to change one of our laws that requires trailer manufacturers to be affiliated with dealerships. 

So, this group in some orbit around some star finds him and says, “Can you help us change this?”

What are the right reasons to want to become a lobbyist? 

I’ve done what I’ve done for 45-plus years, 27 sessions, because I’m called to stand in this scene between business and government. 

I have profound respect for people who work for the public. I have great respect for my members and my board members. They’re two totally different systems. The balance sheet for legislators is how they vote and how they feel. That’s not a balance sheet for a business. 

My advice is to deal with facts. Listen. You can learn a lot. Be yourself, unless you’re an a—–. And know why you’re there, but respect and try to learn why other people are there. 

Every time we find something in the law that looks really stupid, I go back to when it passed. Every mistake we’ve made, we made on purpose. There was a reason that they convinced everybody in 1920 to vote for, I don’t know, tying up horses. 

I think the right reason is to solve problems. If you’re there sincerely, I think that’s the right thing. I don’t like the process when it sinks to the level of win-at-all-costs. I don’t like when it gets abusive – when they’re sending out postcards cards because they found out a lawmaker against their cause was picked up for a DUI when they were 18 years old. 

The wrong reason is just wanting to publicly humiliate those opposing your cause. That makes good people fearful of getting involved. And we’re going through some of that right now. 

The Republican Party is clearly divided into two sides. Right to Life, the NRA, the carbon pipeline people, those groups like to send out nasty cards. I think that’s a cancer in this system. If you’ve got to do that to win, I wish you’d find another occupation. Go be a bartender; leave the state.