Governor silent on Johnson replacement

Gov. Mike Rounds on Election Day in Sioux Falls, S.D. Mr. Rounds has publicly conveyed his prayers for Senator Tim Johnson, who fell ill. Lara Neel/Argus Leader

This is also on The New York Times:

SIOUX FALLS, S.D., Dec. 15 — In the tornado of talk about Senator Tim Johnson’s political future after his surgery to stem bleeding in the brain, one man has stayed mostly out of sight and mostly silent but for conveying his prayers through spokesmen.

Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican whose duty it would be to appoint a replacement for Mr. Johnson, a Democrat, if that becomes necessary, finds himself in his most unlikely political role yet: the single person, potentially, to decide the partisan split of the United States Senate.

Besieged with questions about whom he might select, Mr. Rounds has declined to address the topic, his aides denouncing the inquiries as premature and beyond impolite and a subject that Mr. Rounds would not have given the first thought to.

Mr. Rounds had no public appearance on Thursday or Friday, instead attending private meetings in Pierre, his aides said. “Our concern is for Senator Johnson’s health,” Mark Johnston, his spokesman, said. “That’s South Dakota.”

Still, even as reports arrived from Washington suggesting that Mr. Johnson’s condition was improving, names and theories were quietly emerging here in the chance, however small, that Mr. Rounds were called on to pick a successor. Might he pick a Democrat, to honor Mr. Johnson’s political leanings? How overwhelming would the pressure from the national Republican Party be to pick a Republican?

“I have to believe there are some private conversations going on about all of this, and that the governor’s office is part of those conversations,” said Robert Burns, a political scientist at South Dakota State University in Brookings.

Rounds is in a very tight, almost no-win situation here. He is a popular governor in South Dakota--the Times say he defeated his Democratic opponent with 61 percent of the vote. The Republicans have been trying to court him into running against Johnson in 2008. If he selects a Republican replacement for Johnson, that is going to anger the Democrats--not just in South Dakota, but also throughout the country. If Rounds has any presidential ambitions in the future, then he can kiss those ambitions away. Even if he has ambitions for the Senate in 2008, he's going to have a hard time trying to explain to the Democrats of the state why he chose a Republican replacement that would switch control of the Senate from the Democrats to the Republicans. If Rounds chooses a Democrat, that choice will certainly anger the Republican base in South Dakota. But will the Republican base in South Dakota be angry enough to not select him for a Republican run against that unnamed Democratic senator in 2008? The question for Rounds isn't whether he chooses a Democrat or Republican replacement for Johnson. The real question is which political party candidate does he choose that will piss off the least amount of people--both in South Dakota, and in the entire country. Because the choice Rounds can make will affect not only his own political career, but also the entire national political agenda for the next two years. We have a nation here that has become so polarized between Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative. The makeup of the Senate shows this razor's edged balance between the two political parties and their ideologies. We're in an unpopular war, started by an unpopular president, who insists on doing things his own way and not the way of the American people. We have a slowing economy, potentially rising inflation, and a huge deficit that may never be paid off. These are enormous problems that are certainly starting to weigh on the American public's minds. If Rounds is forced to make a choice in replacing Johnson, then his choice will affect America within all these issues.

I can't say who Rounds would select for this position.