Exposing the Corruption of the "Family Values" Party
Rocky Hayes was the Chair of the Jones County Republican Party. He also has three businesses in marketing and design, photography, and managing a rental property. A DropBox employee provided a tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that there was child sexual abuse material in Hayes’ dropbox. A search found two more videos on an external drive.
Bud ‘Marty’ May, who lost the race for South Dakota House District 27 to his mother, was arrested a week after the 2022 election and charged with rape. It happened in a bar bathroom. Police were called. When police arrived she had blood, dirt, and abrasions on her. May fled the scene. After he was detained, he claimed it was just a hug.
Joel Koskan was a Republican candidate for the South Dakota state senate in 2022. He was arrested in 2022 for grooming and raping a minor child who was a member of his family. It is alleged that he began grooming her as a young child. When she was 14, at bible camp, counselors discussed inappropriate touching and she told them about Koskan. A social worker was sent to do an interview but she did not cooperate. That was when he began to molest her. This continued for five years until she was 19. He was able to maintain control via surveillance cameras and GPS monitoring, limiting her social connections, even able to control her after she went away to school.
T. Denny Sanford is a GOP mega-donor, giving a million to Americans for Prosperity, the anti-tax group, and ten thousand here and twenty-five thousand there. He’s among the elite class of Republican donors. He’s even more influential at the state level in Arizona and South Dakota where he divides his time and his political advocacy. He is also an “implicated individual” in a child sexual abuse material investigation.
Gene Abdallah was a South Dakota state legislator. When he was nominated for the Board of Pardons and Paroles, a woman came forward alleging when he was a lawmaker and she was an ACLU lobbyist he asked if he could watch her pee. He denied it but withdrew his name from consideration.
In 1967, when Jancita Eagle Deer was fifteen she went to her high school counselor and told him that she had been raped by William Janklow, as he drove her home from babysitting . Allegedly, the Bureau of Indian Affairs sent the police investigation files to it Aberdeen office to keep the investigation away from Rosebud Sioux Tribal Court. In 1974, she petitioned the tribe to disbar Janklow from practicing law. The tribal court issued a misdemeanor arrest warrant for Janklow. but he did not live on the reservaton. No arrest was made. Janklow denied all allegations and no criminal charges were filed. He sued Newsweek and Peter Matthiessen who included the story in his book “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.” He lost both suits.
Mathew Wollman represented the 8th district of South Dakota in the state legislature. He was confronted by reporters about having sexual relationships with two college-aged interns. They were adults and the relationships were legal, but they were decidedly unethical. The legislature formed a committee to determine how to punish him, but instead he resigned although he believed he did nothing wrong.
Ironically, a legislative committee voted down a proposal to prohibit relationships with interns and pages. His fiancée was a high school intern though Wollman said their relationship began a year after her high school internship ended.
Wollman now works as a police officer in Madison.
Ted Klaudt was a Republican state representative in South Dakota from 1999 to 2006 when he was term-limited out. He lost to the Democratic candidate when he ran for state Senate. A social conservative, he pushed bills to prohibit schools from distributing birth control and requiring doctors to inform patients considering abortion about the health…