RAPID CITY, SD — Throughout the past few months, the four Republican hopefuls for South Dakota’s most powerful state office has been fierce. Among business owners, ranchers, and DC legislators, Jon Hansen’s prominence in the state legislature is inescapable in his campaign. 

A strong anti-abortion lawmaker, Hansen in 2024 created a PAC to oppose Amendment G (seeking to enshrine abortion as a right within the SD constitution) and in connection to that supported HB1087, which built roadblocks to citizens looking to propose constitutional amendments. His strong Catholic faith has been a major source of a consistent voting record on the issue dating back to his initial election as District 25 Representative in 2011, supporting bills which sought to further penalize abortion and receiving an “A” rating from South Dakota Right to Life, an organization he is a current board member of.

His Gubernatorial campaign has had a singular rhetorical focus on this voting record and on its basis in Hansen’s faith, placing him among swaths of Republicans who claim similar political Christianity. However unlike others, Hansen has not often strayed from this messaging in his time on the podium, which makes a person wonder what exists surrounding this laser-like ideological motivation.

Recently I got an opportunity to speak to Hansen, who said he remained largely optimistic about the upcoming Primaries in spite of polling – which if accurate has consistently favored Dusty Johnson, but recently seen gains by Toby Doeden’s campaign (via SD Searchlight). 

When asked what sets him apart from other candidates, Hansen affirmed the focus of his campaign, planting his feet firmly in faith. “I’ve always felt it’s just really important to sort of put out there. It’s who I am, what I stand for, kind of what makes me tick,” said Hansen, following “We have a long heritage of recognizing God as part of who we are, as a people from our national motto, all the way to our state motto, which is ‘under God, the people rule’. So, you know, that’s one of the core functions of just recognizing that, is thinking about our constitutional liberties, recognizing that those liberties that are in the Constitution – that they’re not creations of the government, that they’re really blessings. That they’re given by God”.

Hansen’s latter sentiment reflects a belief which has its origins in reaction to “State Atheism” within the USSR during the early Cold War. This belief holds that America’s foundation is as an inherently Christian nation. Its fingerprints can be found in the invocation of God in the USA’s Motto (adopted in 1956) and in the pledge of allegiance. In spite of a lack of historical evidence for this idea of foundational faith, Christian Nationalism has found a mainstream appeal in conservative politics which fits cleanly into pre-established niches within the GOP’s overall platform and which has become increasingly essential to conservative hopefuls looking to find a political foothold.

Hansen seemed more varied however when it came to his takes on ideas proposed by his opponents in the race. 

On Dusty Johnson’s personal issue of technological growth within the state, focused on AI data centers and America’s AI superiority over China? Hansen seemed more hesitant. Hansen recounted bills calling for technology tax breaks proposed during the ‘26 legislative session with some amount of discomfort, saying “I don’t think that’s fair to other South Dakota businesses that– I don’t think that we need to be giving Mark Zuckerberg and the richest tech billionaires massive tax breaks. I just don’t think that’s right”. 

While Hansen clarified that he was not opposed entirely to the idea of tech in South Dakota, he voiced that his intention in office or in the legislature would be in the protection of small communities, natural resources, and in protecting the power supply. “We’ve seen in some of these areas where when a data center is constructed, electricity bills skyrocket,” said Hansen, speaking on his success with SD’s SB135, which seeks to protect individuals from material costs associated with data centers, “We want to make sure that the people of South Dakota are treated with respect and put first, not these big tech data centers”. Hansen was hopeful to see legislation pass in the future which would ban NDAs between data centers and utilities providers.

When it came to the cost of living for individuals within those small communities however? Hansen seemed a bit more tepid in his ideas, responding to high grocery, medical, and rent cost by reflecting tendencies of a tried-and-true GOP platform. This platform positions taxation as the biggest financial burden on an individual, with Hansen saying “I’m not done on lowering taxes. I’ve been a stalwart advocate for keeping sales taxes as low as possible, and my first step as Governor is to cut government expenditures and pass that savings back to the people in the form of real tax relief”.

In April, during the third Gubernatorial Debate the topic of early education was broached. While Johnson received much focus for an evasive answer to the question of how to adopt Mississippi’s success in the area without their investment in Pre-K, Hansen’s answer focused on a different issue. Hansen advocated what he called “Parental choice,” or in other words, scholarships which would fund families looking to send their children to private or homeschool. When asked in a followup whether these scholarships would be funded by taxpayer dollars at that same debate, he responded simply “Correct”.

This would more accurately be described as a proposal for a system of “Private School Vouchers”, a system which has been controversial for its potential to diminish legal separation between church and state, and to take away from public school funding. So, I asked him to go a bit more in-depth on this idea. 

“There’s a lot of different approaches to that issue,” said Hansen. “In the past what I’ve done is worked on our Tax Credit Scholarship Program that we have today, and that provides scholarships that are needs-based. So it’s for lower income families who are able to participate in that program, and they’re able to use those scholarship funds,” Hansen then outlined the situation wherein an unnamed insurance company is able to voluntarily diverge its taxes into funding the existing program – proposing a similar system for primary private/homeschool scholarships. “I’ve been supportive of our public schools,” said Hansen, “I think over the over my time in the legislature we’ve had some years where we went way above the funding formula and provided extra funding to education”.

Finally, when looking to Tribal communities in South Dakota – especially in the wake of tensions created at the federal level surrounding mining at Craven Canyon and Pe’ Sla – Hansen spoke to his approach to Tribal relations, “I would just come at it from a fresh start and a fresh perspective on our relationship between the state and the tribes. I know there’s been some real tension in the recent past with the state and the tribes, and I really hope that we could start anew,” following “I don’t come at it with my thinking that I’m going to come in with a bunch of directives for the tribes and stand there and tell them what to do; That’s not my place. I do come at it with an open mind and a loving heart, and a want to be a partner in whatever way that I can, to help address some of the issues that we see on our reservations; and there’s no doubt that there’s issues”. He stated that his hope would be to be able to aid in getting to the heart of issues Native American communities face in “crime, to poverty, to the educational system,” focusing on open communication and collaboration as the cornerstones of his approach.