Might a GOP-controlled legislature actually hold a fellow Republican accountable for gross behavior?
Jason Ravensborg is a piece of work. Ravnsborg, South Dakota’s attorney general, killed a man walking along a road with a flashlight on September 12, 2020.
Ravnsborg already had a rap sheet of speeding offenses. That night, while driving home from a GOP fundraiser, he was scrolling through his phone instead of watching the road. He veered onto the shoulder, and struck and killed Joseph Boever, 55, who was walking back to his own disabled car.
Then Ravnsborg’s horrid behavior began.
He left the scene and reported hitting a deer. The “deer” had smashed in Ravnsborg’s windshield (see photo here) and left its eyeglasses on the front seat of Ravnsborg’s Ford Taurus.
He claimed he got out looked around but didn’t see anything; investigators later would say they couldn’t understand how he missed seeing Boever’s body “laying within two feet of the roadway” or walked past “a flashlight that’s on.” When his story began to unravel, Ravnsborg then alleged that Boever “wanted to die” and threw himself in front of his car (see story here).
If you’re the victim’s family, how would that make you feel? I’d want to strangle him.
This lying sack of wildlife excrement pleaded guilty to two minor misdemeanors and got off with a pair of $500 fines, which makes you wonder about South Dakota’s legal system. Does it protect politicians from consequences, even for killing someone?
An insurance company paid a settlement to Boever’s family, which didn’t cost Ravnsborg a cent of his own money. With his driving record, he still had insurance?
And then, when South Dakota’s governor demanded he resign, he refused; and when she called on the legislature to impeach him, a House committee voted along party lines not to. (See story here.) Do South Dakota’s GOP legislators care more about protecting a fellow Republican than holding him responsible for egregiously bad conduct?
Huh. The GOP touts “family values” and claims to be the party of “individual responsibility.” Doesn’t look like it from here.
But there is at least one exception among South Dakota’s Republicans — the governor, who’s a Republican, too, but Ravnsborg’s conduct was too gross even for her.
Anyway, with further prodding, the reticent Republican legislators finally did something: On Tuesday, April 12, 2022, more than a year-and-a-half after the incident, South Dakota’s House impeached Ravnsborg (read story here).
Now, it will be up to the GOP-controlled Senate to remove him from office. Let’s see if they do — or protect a fellow Republican, or leave in place as South Dakota’s top law enforcement officer a serial traffic scofflaw who killed a man by his distracted driving, fled the scene, lied about it, and then called the dead victim whose body was left laying in a ditch for 22 hours a suicidal deer.
Photo below: The victim’s family watches the impeachment vote from the South Dakota state capitol gallery
