Fireworks to return to Mount Rushmore for nation’s 250th birthday in 2026
Fireworks will be making a comeback at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota in 2026 for a Fourth of July celebration.
Straight Arrow News
- South Dakota House Speaker Jon Hansen and Speaker Pro Tempore Karla Lems announced their candidacies for governor and lieutenant governor, respectively.
- The pair are campaigning on an anti-establishment platform, citing voter dissatisfaction with “status quo” politics and government spending.
- They are the first to announce their candidacy, but other prominent politicians, including current Governor Larry Rhoden and U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson, are also considering bids.
Dissatisfaction with the “status quo” is driving Jon Hansen and Karla Lems to run for South Dakota governor and lieutenant governor, they said.
The pair officially announced their 2026 campaign to hundreds of supporters April 24 at the South Dakota Military Heritage Alliance in Sioux Falls. The crowd included property rights advocates against eminent domain for carbon dioxide pipelines, “election integrity” activists and over a dozen Republican lawmakers.
Hansen, who currently serves as state House speaker, will seek the Republican Party’s nomination for governor, with Lems, his second in command in the House, running to serve as his lieutenant governor.
The two, along with speakers who introduced them, said elected officials too often put the “people’s interests” second to special interests. To resounding applause, they said that’s caused a wave of opposition to establishment politicians, a referred state pipeline law that voters rejected in November, and ousted incumbent state lawmakers in last June’s primary election.
“Grassroots patriots from all across the great state of South Dakota are standing up and we are saying in record numbers, ‘No more corruption, no more waste and abuse, no more tax on our land and our liberties and our way of life,’” Hansen said to the crowd. “Today renews the coming of the end for all of that.”
If elected, Hansen pledged to “clean up” the system by cutting state government and spending. He also promised to create “education choice grants” for alternative and private school education, and sign an executive order to “define man and woman, end the woke and restore common sense.” Hansen said he plans to stop offering “corporate welfare” as well.
Republican governors and lawmakers for decades have invested millions of tax dollars in bonds, loans and grants to entice businesses to build and expand in the state. That includes funding for farmers and value-added operations, as well as support for larger investments such as Tru Shrimp.
Hansen cited the Tru Shrimp deal as an example of “corporate welfare.”
State and local officials committed $6.5 million in taxpayer money for a low-interest loan six years ago for Tru Shrimp to build a facility in Madison. The company has not built the facility, even though it was expected to break ground in 2024. The company, which has since changed its name to Iterro, announced it’s “more than halfway” to its fundraising goal to begin the Madison project earlier this year.
“I think it’s just unnecessary government mingling, and it’s risky business, and they’re wasting our taxpayer dollars to do it,” Hansen said of the deal. “It’s that sort of stuff that we want to say ‘no more’ to. Let’s just get back to the free market, low tax and low regulation.”
A Dell Rapids lawyer, Hansen has spent a decade in the South Dakota House of Representatives. The 39-year-old was elected House speaker for the most recent legislative session after serving as speaker pro tempore from 2021 to 2022.
Lems, from Canton, owns a coffee shop and property management business. The 56-year-old entered the state political fray in 2022 and was elected as House speaker pro tempore during the most recent legislative session, the first woman to hold the position in state history.
The two are riding the momentum of private property rights and anti-abortion successes in the last year.
Both have been leading forces on property rights in the Legislature, culminating in an eminent domain ban for carbon capture pipelines signed into law this year. The legislation contributed to the Public Utilities Commission’s recent denial of Summit Carbon Solutions’ second permit application to build a portion of its $9 billion pipeline through the state.
Hansen would sometimes be introduced as “our governor” during rallies in opposition to Summit’s pipeline. He told attendees at the event Thursday that under his leadership, the “only thing that’s going to get sequestered are leftist climate policies” — a reference to Summit’s planned underground “sequestration” of carbon dioxide in North Dakota. Meanwhile, Republican President Donald Trump championed carbon capture and storage this week, highlighting it as part of his agenda to improve American energy production.
When asked about Trump’s support of carbon sequestration, Hansen said “when it comes to taking people’s land and using it without their consent in order to build a risky pipeline across their property, that’s a big no.”
Hansen has also focused on anti-abortion legislation and tightening South Dakota’s election laws in the Legislature. Now vice president of South Dakota Right to Life and co-chair of the Life Defense Fund, he organized a campaign last year that fended off a ballot initiative to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.
Hansen and Lems are the first to announce their candidacy for the governor’s race, though other prominent South Dakota politicians have said they’re considering their own bids, including Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden and Republican U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson. Other Republicans frequently mentioned as possible candidates include Attorney General Marty Jackley, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018, and Aberdeen businessman Toby Doeden, who briefly considered a run against Johnson for U.S. House last year.
Rhoden, who formerly served as lieutenant governor, changed the name of his campaign fundraising committee to “Rhoden for Governor” in February. His lieutenant governor, Tony Venhuizen, created a new campaign fundraising committee the same month.
The Legislature changed the process for choosing lieutenant governor nominees this year. The new law allows candidates for governor to choose their running mate, rather than relying on political party conventions to nominate them.
If more than one person from each party seeks the nomination, party voters will choose their nominee for governor in the primary election on June 2, 2026. The winners will advance to the general election on Nov. 3, 2026.
Rhoden is currently serving the remainder of the second term won by former Gov. Kristi Noem, who would’ve been term-limited at the end of 2026. She resigned earlier this year to accept the top job at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
