The sad news comes of the passing of Rolly Samp, this Tuesday in Sioux Falls at the age of 82.
Rolly Samp was a fixture in South Dakota politics for decades, as Pat Powers wrote in his tribute on South Dakota War College. In his early 20s, Samp was a staffer and campaign manager for Congressman Ben Reifel. He managed Frank Farrar’s 1968 gubernatorial campaign, and became Farrar’s chief of staff when Samp was only 25 years old. (Farrar, among the state’s youngest governors, was only 39 years old).
Farrar lost reelection in 1970. Samp, a Flandreau native, became active in the campaigns of a fellow son of Flandreau, Bill Janklow, who was elected attorney general in 1974 and governor in 1978. Pat Powers quoted from an account of Samp’s later political involvement:
In 1972 he organized a citizens group to successfully authorize and fund a four-year medical school for the state. He successfully fought for authorization of private college student funding in 1976. In 1977, Rolly was a leader in the group that removed a 45 year ban on championship high school football playoffs in the state. In 1985, he founded South Dakotans to Save Our Lakes and served as president from 1987 to 1991. He was chairman of the Minnehaha County Ambulance Study in 1993. He served on the Governor’s Task Force on Trust Reform which was enacted by the SD Legislature. He co-authored a South Dakota Law Review article on trust situs (SD Law Review No. 44/3).
Rolly served 8 years as Chief Tribal Judge of the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe. He served as chairman of the SD Bar Association Group Insurance Committee, a member of the Minority Task Force of the SD Association of Christian Churches and as the Governor’s appointee to the SD Emergency Food & Shelter Board.
I cannot say that I knew Rolly Samp well. We had a common bond among all those who have served as chief of staff to a governor. While I was serving on the Board of Regents, I was honored in 2022 to confer an honorary doctorate for public service for Samp at Dakota State University, recognizing the role he played in Governor Janklow’s foresightful mission change of that school in the 1980s.
Rolly Samp’s complete obituary is available here. It goes into more detail about many of the ways that he had an impact on South Dakota during a long and varied career.
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