The 2014 United States Senate election in South Dakota took place on November 4, 2014, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the state of South Dakota, concurrently with the election of the Governor of South Dakota, as well as other elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections. This was one of the seven Democratic-held Senate seats up for election in a state that Mitt Romney won in the 2012 presidential election.
Incumbent Democratic Senator Tim Johnson decided to retire instead of running for re-election to a fourth term in office. As a result, this was the first open seat election since 1978. Former South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds won the open seat, giving South Dakota an all-GOP congressional delegation for the first time since 1963 and giving Republicans control of both of South Dakota's Senate seats for the first time since 1987.
Businessman Rick Weiland ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination. Also running were two independent candidates: former Republican U.S. Senator Larry Pressler, who held this seat from 1979 to 1997, and former Republican state senator Gordon Howie.
Weiland faced no opposition in the Democratic primary.
Rounds was widely seen as the front runner throughout the campaign. However, he faced ongoing criticism on the election trail for his possible involvement with the State's ongoing EB-5 visa investigation, concerning the conflict of interest that Rounds' administration had when administering the EB-5 program. State officials misused funds to pay for their salaries, did not disclose that they owned companies which they gave contracts to, directed money towards companies that went bankrupt and arranged for loans from unknown sources from shell companies located in tax havens. In October 2014, Rounds admitted that he had approved a $1 million state loan to meat-packing company Northern Beef shortly after learning that Secretary of Tourism and State Development Richard Benda had agreed to join the company, with Benda then getting another $600,000 in loans that was ultimately used to pay his own salary. Benda committed suicide in October 2013, days before a possible indictment over embezzlement and grand theft charges.
Columnist Jonathan Ellis of the Argus Leader called Rounds' fundraising "anemic" compared to the amount of outside money coming into the state on Weiland's side, and criticized the entire Rounds campaign as "more suited for sheriff of Mayberry County than U.S. Senate."
With Herseth Sandlin<br />
With B. Johnson<br />
With T. Johnson<br />
With Weiland<br />
Official campaign websites (Archived)