By 
Dusty Johnson greets veterans at a medal-pinning ceremony on Sept. 16 at the Military Alliance building in Sioux Falls. South Dakota Searchlight photo by John Hult.
Republican U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson and his political allies say the accusation that he’s a career politician is an empty one.
His Democratic opponent in the Nov. 5 election, Sheryl Johnson, bases the criticism on narratives that many South Dakotans have heard about the congressman.
His rise from a Republican upstart who hustled his way at age 28 to a seat on the Public Utilities Commission to becoming the state’s lone U.S. House representative has been thoroughly documented.
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State- and national-level profiles of Johnson abound with familiar tropes: about his work ethic, his policy wonkery and the self-deprecating humor that had him comparing himself to teenage TV doctor Doogie Howser in the election night speech he delivered when he was first elected to Congress in 2018.
Johnson also frequently leans into a “workhorse, not a show horse” narrative by chastising his fellow members of Congress for slinging mud instead of solutions.
When asked why he’s still interested in being part of an elected body he often describes as dysfunctional, the 48-year-old Johnson points to his membership in the pragmatist Main Street Caucus, or to articles with headlines like “Nerdy South Dakota Republican Is Quiet Power Behind the Speaker,” published last month by Bloomberg Government.
He posted a link to that story on his official congressional webpage.
Rep. Dusty Johnson, Guest Columnist
“I helped to negotiate new work requirements for able-bodied folks in assistance programs, I helped to negotiate the biggest reforms to siting American energy projects in a generation,” Johnson told South Dakota Searchlight. “I mean, these are all things that actually got signed into law.”
Sheryl Johnson has criticized her opponent as someone who’s always eyeing his next job.
Rep. Johnson vacated his PUC seat in 2010 shortly after being elected to a second term, to work as chief of staff for then-incoming Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard. Now, six years after winning his seat in the House, Johnson is widely thought to be considering a run for governor in 2026 when Gov. Kristi Noem is term-limited.
Sheryl Johnson said those are the moves of “a career politician,” and she chose her “SD Mom for Congress” slogan in large part to make the contrast clear.
Congressman: Private sector could have won over politics
Daugaard doesn’t agree with that characterization of his former chief of staff.
“The question is, ‘Can he relate to people who are not in politics?’ I think he can,” Daugaard said. “Just because someone’s been in politics for a number of years doesn’t mean they’re bad at it, or that it would be good to have someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing come in.”
Rep. Will Mortenson, the current state House majority leader, worked on Johnson’s first PUC campaign. He said charges of “career politician” stuck to Democratic former U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle in his losing race against Republican John Thune in 2004 because Daschle lost his connection with the state.
“Daschle moved to D.C.,” Mortenson said. “Everybody knows that Dusty is back every weekend, because they see him at county fairs.”
Daugaard and Mortenson also pointed to Johnson’s four years in the private sector at Vantage Point Solutions in Mitchell — the city where Johnson still lives with his family when he’s not in Washington — as proof that he’s about more than political ambition.
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In political circles, his time at the company was seen as little more than private sector window dressing on an otherwise exclusively public sector career.
Johnson’s lifelong engagement with politics and policy plus the timing of his move to the private sector suggested that Vantage Point was strategic politically.
Current Gov. Kristi Noem held the state’s congressional seat in 2014. Daugaard ran for re-election that year; former Gov. Mike Rounds was running for U.S. Senate.
Schaff
“The general path of someone who’d worked for PUC, then worked for Gov. Daugaard, that’s someone with political ambitions,” said Jon Schaff, director of the Center for Public History and Civic Engagement at Northern State University. “He was waiting for the timing to work out. He was ready to move up, but there weren’t really any openings. Almost everybody saw Dusty’s move to the private sector as biding his time.”
Vantage Point offered opportunity to bridge gap between policy, engineering
To hear the congressman tell it, his return to politics wasn’t certain. He made more money at Vantage Point than he can make in Congress, he said – he was a co-owner during his time there – plus the job allowed him to spend more time with his family.
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“I’ve been in elected office 11 of my 48 years,” Johnson said. “I’ve been proud of the six years I had on the PUC and the five-years-plus I’ve had in Congress, but I’m every bit as proud of the very successful career I built in the private sector. That company’s got 450 employees right now. It is absolutely the national leader in rural broadband. And I helped get it to that point.”
Little has been written about Johnson’s work at Vantage Point, perhaps because of the complexity of the business.