By Nathaniel "Beltway" Steele
Monae Johnson runs elections in South Dakota. She is also a Republican. And according to the New York Times, she is now backing the Democrat running to succeed her rather than the conservative candidate carrying her own party's banner.
The Times reports Johnson is the latest Republican incumbent to speak out against conservative candidates as President Trump's standing erodes ahead of the midterm elections. The specific grievances driving her break — policy disagreements, character concerns, something else — were not detailed in available reporting, and this paper has not independently confirmed them. What is documented is the endorsement itself: a sitting Republican secretary of state choosing the opposing party's nominee for her own former post.
Such defections are rare enough to make news on their own. They matter more in the aggregate. A secretary of state's job is unglamorous but load-bearing — certifying results, setting rules for ballot access, fielding the disputes that follow close races. When the person who has run that office breaks publicly with her own party's nominee, it is a signal aimed less at any single voter than at her fellow Republicans watching from the sidelines.
Whether Johnson's endorsement moves votes in South Dakota is unknowable this far out. What it confirms is a pattern reporters have been tracking all year: pockets of Republican officials, closest to the machinery of government, declining to fall in line as the party's midterm map grows more difficult. Further reporting on Johnson's specific reasons, and the race itself, is warranted before more can be said.
— Compiled from reporting by The New York Times.
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