In South Dakota, Herseths have been holding office for years.

Ralph Herseth was the state’s 21st governor from 1959 to 1961; his wife, Lorna, was the Mount Rushmore State’s Secretary of State in the 1970s; and Lars Herseth, their son, served in the state legislature from the mid-1970s through 1996.

But Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (COL ’93, LAW ’97, GRAD ’98, PhD ’03) never planned to be the next in line. Even after four politically-active undergraduate years at Georgetown, she shied from seeking public office.

That all changed in 2002, when Herseth Sandlin challenged popular incumbent governor Bill Janklow (R-S.D.) for the state’s lone seat in Congress.

She lost that first election, but it wasn’t long before her name was back on the ballot. Janklow resigned amidst a manslaughter conviction in 2004 and Herseth Sandlin won his seat in a special election after a hotly contested battle.

Capitol Hill is neither an unfamiliar place nor unattainable goal for former Georgetown students, with 21 graduates of the undergraduate schools, law school or medical school serving in this 110th Congress. Herseth Sandlin, though, took a rather circuitous route to the House, but the twists and turns on the way from the Hilltop to the Hill are what make her story one for the history books.

A Surefire Future

Professor Jim Lengle, who teaches classes on presidential politics and constitutional reform in the government department, says that Herseth-Sandlin struck him as a different kind of student from her first class with him. He said that she showed a different kind of passion for government.

“She was the perfect government major in just about every way,” Lengle says. “She threw herself into every class she took. She wasn’t the kind of student who just came, sat in the back row, took notes, got her A’s and went off to law school. And there are plenty of students here at Georgetown, they do just that.”

While receiving an award from Georgetown’s College Democrats last week, Herseth Sandlin recalled one of Lengle’s presidential electoral politics lectures and an exercise that shows how only a few members of the class could be considered for the presidency today because of the all-male Anglo-Saxon history of the office.

But Herseth Sandlin has not been one to follow norms. With very few Democrats in South Dakota and after 10 years with a Republican in the House of Representatives, Herseth Sandlin was the first woman from South Dakota elected to a full term of Congress. Despite being a Democrat with a long family history in politics and a woman studying a field long-dominated by men, Lengle says Herseth Sandlin was not one to toe the lines.

“In my constitutional reform class, where students sit as a constitutional convention and rewrite the U.S. Constitution, Stephanie cast the deciding vote against amending the current Constitution with gender-neutral language,” Lengle says about his old student, describing that she valued the document as a historical reference point and loathed putting 20th-century politically correct language into it.

Outside of class, Herseth Sandlin quickly fell in with the College Democrats, being appointed co-freshman chair in her first year. She eventually rose to president of the club, rallying her troops around Bill Clinton (SFS ’68) and hosting a national College Democrats conference in the Leavey Center. At that conference Al Gore gave a presentation on — what else? — the environment.

After school, she faced a crossroads: dive into politics or pursue other interests?

“I actually was nominated to be an alternate delegate to the 1992 Democratic convention in New York,” Herseth Sandlin says, describing her change of heart. “I decided I didn’t want to do it and went to Quito, Ecuador, to become proficient on my Spanish. I decided to turn my back on politics … and I decided I wanted to pursue my other interests at Georgetown and afterward.”

While those around her may have thought she was quickly headed for elected office, Herseth Sandlin was content to serve as the executive director of the South Dakota Farmers Union Foundation and teach classes at two universities in South Dakota.

But for all Herseth Sandlin’s political acumen to rally farmers and win, she would not have had the chance to run had her predecessor not killed a man and then resigned.

She lost her initial shot at representing her home state when she lost to Janklow, who had been elected to statewide office a half-dozen times. — including two eight-year terms as governor. But Herseth Sandlin would get her shot at Capitol Hill when tragedy struck two years later.

Janklow resigned from Congress after he was convicted of 2nd degree manslaughter for hitting Minnesota native Randolph Scott with his car, killing him instantly. Herseth Sandlin was the Democratic nominee in a special election with 51 percent of the vote. She would have a better showing two years later, receiving 69 percent of the vote in her reelection bid in 2006.

“The immediate goal was get the job as the lawyer and pay off the debt,” Lengle said of Herseth Sandlin and most graduates of the Law Center. “She basically had to decide whether that opportunity to jump at that open seat was more important than the financial end of her personal life. … She was smart enough to understand that those kinds of opportunities aren’t guaranteed. Sometimes they come infrequently and you have to grab them when they do, when they do arise.”

The representative agrees with her old professor. It was not until she rebuffed requests to run for South Dakota Attorney General that she was forced to consider running for office so soon in life. Soon after, then-Senator Tom Daschle (D - S.D.) invited her to a political retreat where she reconciled running for office.

“There are so many students that come to Georgetown that are interested in politics, interested in government, but there are so many things out of your control in politics,” Herseth Sandlin says. “The personal timing, the professional timing and the political timing, all those stars are never going to be aligned perfectly. … [Students] really need to be bold and not think they’re not prepared to take that step and be ready to even run on the ballot themselves.”

Once Herseth Sandlin did make it into Congress, some of the people she met while at Georgetown were the first to wave hello.

“First people I reached out to for help the first time I ran for Congress, the first people I went to for campaign donations were fellow College Democrats,” Herseth Sandlin said. She continues, telling the story of running into a former College Democrat on the House floor as she was waiting to be sworn in following her special election.

“So there is [then-]Senator Tom Daschle, [now-]Speaker Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Jeremy Bash (COL ’93),” she continued. “He was on the House Select Committee on Intelligence and had floor credentials and comes over and gives me a big hug before I get sworn in.”

As a Representative, Herseth Sandlin works extensively on securing more funding for alternative fuel sources, especially those that rely on agriculture produced in South Dakota. With congressional and presidential support for ethanol based biofuels, corn growers in South Dakota and elsewhere stand to make a windfall. Thirteen of the 29 bills she is sponsoring this term involve support for veterans or Native Americans while the rest deal with agriculture, farming and rural Internet access.

Interning for an Old Intern

Like many government majors at Georgetown, aspiring politicians or not, Herseth Sandlin spent time as an intern on Capitol Hill, working in the same Cannon House Office Building where she now has an office. She spent her time under then-Representative Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), a Democrat, who would later run for the Senate. Little more than 10 years after working for Johnson, Herseth-Sandlin appeared on the same ballot with him in the election she lost to Janklow in 2002.

Today, Sioux Falls native Danny Gustafson (COL ’11) is now in Herseth Sandlin’s shoes, so to speak, working for the congresswoman as an intern on the Hill. Gustafson, the Georgetown College Democrats’ chief of staff, says he became interested in politics late in high school. He wanted to come to Georgetown because of the university’s proximity to the federal government.

Herseth Sandlin’s immense rise in popularity in her home state and, importantly, her party affiliation drew Gustafson to her office.

“There’s very few Democrats in South Dakota and seeing someone that’s actually popular and very electable is very rare for Democrats in South Dakota,” he says.

And the numbers agree: South Dakota has not voted blue in a presidential race since 1964, even though 1972 Democratic candidate George McGovern called the Mount Rushmore State home. South Dakota has not elected a Democratic governor since 1978. When Herseth Sandlin was elected, South Dakota had its first all-Democratic delegation to Congress since 1937.

Herseth Sandlin’s popularity skyrocketed during the 2006 election when she won with nearly 70 percent of the popular vote. She outspent her opponent, Bruce Whalen, by a factor of 10 and had South Dakotan farmers firmly behind her as well as two previous generations of Herseths in South Dakota office.

“The name recognition was big in her first election, from what I saw,” Gustafson said. “She had been involved in several agriculture lobbies, and obviously having ag[riculture] behind you is a big deal in South Dakota, and she managed to do that.”

And with her continued support of pro- farm and veteran bills, the high price of grain and her stances as a fiscally conservative, socially moderate Democrat, Herseth Sandlin is in good position to keep tight hold of her seat come November. Unless of course, life throws another political curveball her way.