Governor Larry Rhoden won the Republican nomination for governor on Tuesday, winning the state’s first-ever statewide runoff. Rhoden prevailed with 83,582 votes and 70.8% to 34,430 and 29.2% for Aberdeen businessman Toby Doeden. (The vote count may change slightly in the final election canvas).
Doeden had finished first in the primary with 31% but a Keloland/Emerson College Poll, released on July 15, had projected Rhoden’s victory, finding that he had successfully consolidated the majority of the voters who supported Congressman Dusty Johnson and House Speaker Jon Hansen in the primary.
Rhoden became South Dakota’s 34th Governor in January 2025, following the resignation of Governor Kristi Noem, and he set several historical milestones at the time that he took office. His runoff win makes him the first governor to have succeeded to the office and then to subsequently be nominated for a full term.
In 1994, Governor Walter Dale Miller, who has succeeded the year prior upon the death of Governor George S. Mickelson, lost his reelection bid to former Governor Bill Janklow. (Lt. Governor Harvey Wollman lost his 1978 bid for the Democratic nomination prior to succeeding to the governorship later that summer.)
A native of Union Center, Rhoden is the first West River Republican to be nominated for governor since Carv Thompson, a Faith legislator and pharmacist who unsuccessfully challenged Governor Richard F. Kneip in 1972. If elected, Rhoden would be the first West River resident elected governor since M. Q. Sharpe, a Kennebec attorney who was elected governor in 1942 and 1944.
Sharpe was also the last gubernatorial nominee who failed to win the nomination outright in the Republican primary. In the 1942 Republican gubernatorial primary, State Taxation Director Joseph H. Bottum finished first with 28.8%, followed by former Attorney General M. Q. Sharpe with 25.7%, Attorney General Leo A. Temmey with 24.5%, and State Rural Credits Director Millard G. Scott with 21.0%. Under the law at that time, the four candidates all advanced to the State Republican Convention, where Sharpe prevailed on the third ballot.
The 2026 gubernatorial election is the first in which gubernatorial nominees designate a running mate, rather than the prior practice of the state party conventions rubber-stamping the running mate selection. Rhoden has already said that Lt. Governor Tony Venhuizen, who he appointed upon taking office in 2025, will be his running mate.
The Rhoden/Venhuizen ticket advances now to the November general election. The Democratic nominee, former state legislator Dan Ahlers of Dell Rapids, has not yet selected a running mate, but will be required to do so in the coming days.
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