PIERRE, S.D. (South Dakota Searchlight) – Nikki Gronli would love to have her old job back.
During a debate earlier this month with Attorney General Marty Jackley, her Republican opponent in the race for the state’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Democratic former South Dakota director of rural development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture said she’d have “happily” continued doing that job under Republican President Donald Trump.
“It was the best job I ever had,” Gronli told South Dakota Searchlight the following week.
She was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, and lost her job early on in Trump’s second term, as did some of her staff amid Trump’s widespread reduction of the federal workforce.
“In South Dakota, a quarter of my staff lost their jobs,” said Gronli, who’d supervised 38 staff members at USDA after spending most of her career in marketing.
Hear Democratic U.S. House nominee Nikki Gronli’s views on immigration, artificial intelligence, social media, agriculture and more in this episode of the Searchlight Report podcast.
It wasn’t long before Gronli was traveling the state, talking to people at town halls about the impact those federal job cuts were having and could have in the future for South Dakota. By the end of 2025, the Aurora native and Dell Rapids resident — who’d been vice-chairwoman of the South Dakota Democratic Party prior to her Biden administration appointment — was a candidate for the seat Republican U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson was vacating for what would ultimately be a failed attempt to secure his party’s nomination for governor.
The election for the open U.S. House seat is Nov. 3, advance voting is underway, and the voter registration deadline is Monday.
As with her past roles as a hockey parent-advocate for the construction of the Scheels IcePlex in Sioux Falls, a member of the Siouxland Historical Society Board and member of the Minnehaha County Housing and Redevelopment Commission, Gronli said running for office is about “stepping up where I was needed.”
Jackley: From private sector to public service and back again
Jackley’s path to a congressional run was also paved in part by a political appointment.
The Sturgis-born lawyer, who also has a degree in electrical engineering and has a farm in Butte County and a ranch near Pierre, served as South Dakota’s U.S. attorney under Republican President George W. Bush. It was his first full-time public service job, taken after working part-time prosecuting drug cases for former South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long.
“That appointment was a career shift for me,” Jackley told South Dakota Searchlight.
Hear Republican U.S. House nominee Marty Jackley’s views on immigration, artificial intelligence, social media, agriculture and more in this episode of the Searchlight Report podcast.
When President Barack Obama took office, Jackley was replaced as U.S. attorney. A year later, Long became a circuit judge in Minnehaha County. Jackley was appointed to replace him as South Dakota attorney general. Jackley’s father, Mike, the longtime Meade County state’s attorney and unsuccessful 1986 candidate for attorney general, swore him in.
His dad never ran again for statewide office, but was elected multiple times to the county post. There’s more money for lawyers in the private sector, but “our family’s always believed in public service,” Jackley said.
He was elected as attorney general in 2010 and reelected in 2014.
He stepped away from public life in 2019 after losing the Republican primary race for governor to Kristi Noem, and went to work at the same Rapid City law firm he’d started at in the late 1990s.
He returned to the attorney general job in 2022 after running unopposed.
Jackley was elected president of the National Association of Attorneys General from 2015 to 2016, and was chosen as president-elect in December of 2025. As a part of that group, he worked with his Democratic and Republican counterparts on multi-state law enforcement initiatives, including as one of the lead plaintiffs in a recent multi-state lawsuit in California that led to a settlement with Meta, the parent company of Facebook, over its products’ alleged damage to children’s mental health.
“I look at this as that opportunity to use what I’ve learned as attorney general, the relationships I’ve developed with Republicans and Democrats, to go to Washington and address the important issues for South Dakota,” Jackley said.
Challenges for both candidates
Mike Card, a retired political science professor for the University of South Dakota, said Gronli’s party is her biggest challenge in the race. Registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats in South Dakota, but Democrat registrations also run behind the combined number of people registered as independent or with no party affiliation.
To become the first Democrat elected to the U.S. House from South Dakota since 2008, Card said, Gronli “has to find a way to take positions that stand out from her opponent and resonate with voters.”
“It does seem that she’s got to find a way to give voice to her perspective, being different and better than what Marty Jackley has for issue positions,” Card said.
Jackley has name recognition and the advantage of being the Republican in the race, Card said, but the professor also sees the attorney general as a lackluster political communicator, perhaps a reflection of Jackley’s engineering background and years spent in the weeds of lawyerly rhetoric.
“He’s certainly got the credentials. He’s got lots of evidence he could be using. He just doesn’t seem to be using it to his advantage,” Card said.
Tariff issue divides, but both candidates say Congress should be involved
Gronli said during an Oct. 1 debate that Trump’s “blanket tariffs” and tariff threats have hit South Dakotans in the pocketbook, contributing to high prices for goods and services. Tariffs are taxes paid by those who import goods from other countries.
Outside the debate, Gronli has said the tariffs cost South Dakotans $1,300 a year, citing a figure from the nonprofit Tax Foundation used in a February Newsweek article.
Gronli didn’t use the $1,300 figure in the debate, but Jackley brought it up.
After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down some of Trump’s tariffs, the foundation’s current figure for how much more the average household will pay because of tariffs is $820. Jackley said that $820 was “still too high” a burden on South Dakota families, but said the number is coming down. He later told South Dakota Searchlight that his opponent was either using the larger, earlier estimate for political effect or that “she doesn’t understand the issue.”
He also criticized Gronli’s use of the term “blanket tariffs”
“We don’t have blanket tariffs,” that cover all goods from all countries, Jackley said in a follow-up interview with Searchlight, “so she’s wrong on that.”
“We have had an impact in South Dakota, but she inflated it,” Jackley said, referencing the $1,300 figure from February, “which is wrong.”
Free trade deals with targeted tariffs, ideally built with input from Congress, could ultimately benefit the U.S. economy, Jackley told Searchlight.
“My position has always been that it has to be targeted,” said Jackley.
Gronli said Jackley used the $820 figure as a “gotcha,” but “$820 is too much for families to take on when grocery prices are high, gas is high, and everybody’s concerned.”
Gronli said Congress needs to be a check on the president on trade.
“We should have trade experts that are negotiating in good faith, getting us good deals, but also considering our American economy has a lot of reliance on those neighbors,” she said.
Immigration differences
During the debate and in a later interview with Searchlight, Jackley said Gronli “wants to get rid of” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“I’m a former U.S. attorney and an attorney general, and the relationship we have with ICE is essential,” said Jackley, citing the immigration agency’s contributions to the state’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
Jackley pointed to the state Division of Criminal Investigation’s enforcement agreement with ICE, which allows agents to question people about their immigration status and detain them for the federal agency. Jackley said he’s limited that authority to cases involving violent crime, and said the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement actions and moves to secure the border between the U.S. and Mexico have improved public safety.
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Border security is important, Gronli said, but she sees the administration’s deportation efforts as counterproductive to discussions on comprehensive immigration reform.
“I want Congress to take up looking at the visa programs that we have for workers, because going out and talking to those in poultry and egg-laying operations and dairies, those visas are not working for them,” Gronli said. “They can’t fill roles without having immigrant labor.”
Gronli said she doesn’t support ICE’s immigration enforcement efforts in South Dakota, but she’s not interested in dismantling the agency or ending its partnerships on crimes against children.
She wants “new leadership” and “a well-run department,” as well as a shift in priorities for federal spending away from deportations. ICE is targeting too many immigrants who don’t have a violent criminal record, she said, and its tactics have been too aggressive.
“We’ve spent just an exorbitant amount of money on that department, and it has shifted away from the American people,” Gronli said. “I feel like we have a misalignment with the way we’re using our dollars, and it’s been shifted towards an organization that’s brutalizing and has even killed American citizens.”
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