A family business downtown, a career at a Rapid City software company, and more than a decade on the West Side. I'm running for District 34 because the people here deserve a senator who works on what matters to them.
My wife, Jennifer, and I met in high school in Pennsylvania, deepened our friendship through college, and we've been building a life together ever since. A few years in Colorado, and then we went looking for the right town to plant it in. A record store for sale in Rapid City, South Dakota is a strange thing to have tip the decision, but that's what happened. We moved on Christmas Eve 2014. The Black Hills in winter didn't scare us off. The town did the opposite. We stayed.
We've put down roots on the West Side, the part of Rapid City that's now District 34, the people I'm asking to represent. I'm not running for a district I read about on a map. I'm running for the place where I live.
My interest in politics and community didn't start with a campaign. It started in a public high school civics class in Pennsylvania called Project 18. The whole course was getting out and doing the work: work the polls on election day, sit in on local government meetings, help out on a campaign, and take a trip to the state capitol to watch how a bill becomes a law.
A school year of taking part instead of reading about it changed how I saw government. Government is something you show up for. The fact that a public high school made room for a class like that is part of why I believe in public education, and it's a big part of why I've stayed engaged in my community ever since.
Black Hills Vinyl, now at 622 St. Joseph Street, has been a fixture of downtown for more than a decade. We bought a store that was finding its voice, and we've spent our time growing it into a community: a bigger footprint on the block and a disc golf pro shop alongside the records. Our daughter is growing up running between the bins.
The shop is Jennifer's day-to-day. Since 2019, my full-time work has been at a Rapid City software company. It was founded by South Dakota School of Mines grads and got its start in an on-campus incubator. Today it employs more than 50 people, many of them Mines grads, and runs a summer internship program for the next generation of tech professionals. It's a front-row seat to the new economy I think this city can build.
When we took over the store, we made a short list of what we wanted to do with it. Hire our neighbors. Trade the lease for a deed. Put something back into the town that had taken us in. We've done those things, and we keep looking for more.
Some of it has been close to home: three years on the Rapid City Parks and Recreation Board, and serving as president of the local disc golf club, whose members have raised tens of thousands of dollars for Feeding South Dakota and other charities over the years. Small shops, local groups, and neighbors looking out for each other. That's how a town works.
Between a Main Street shop, a software job in town, and a young family growing up here, you get to know Rapid City from a few angles at once. You see who can't afford to stay and who's stopping in to say goodbye before they move. You hear from teachers on a long afternoon. You hear from small-business owners worried about what another property-tax year will mean for a lease. You hear from parents looking at starter homes, doing the math and not liking the results.
You watch Feeding South Dakota's demand climb year over year while lawmakers in Pierre argue about things that aren't going to fix any of it.
I've stepped up to serve before. I ran for the Senate in 2020, in what was then District 32, and again in 2024, before stepping back to welcome our child. Those campaigns taught me this district, its people, and what serving it asks of you.
In 2025 I was part of the Billie Sutton Leadership Institute, a nonpartisan South Dakota program that prepares the next generation of leaders to build a stronger state and more vibrant communities through service to others. A year spent alongside South Dakotans devoted to leading with courage, compassion, and integrity reminded me that the best use of everything those earlier campaigns taught me is to serve. That's a big part of why I decided to step up again.
There's a practical reason too. South Dakota runs a closed primary, and in a district like this one the primary usually decides who represents you. By November, a lot of voters open the ballot and find only one name on it. I'm running because the people of District 34 deserve a real choice in November: two candidates, two sets of priorities, instead of a race decided in June.
I'm not running to win a national argument. Pierre isn't Washington. The job here is local: housing a working family in Rapid City can afford, healthcare that doesn't bankrupt the people who keep this town running, public schools worth sending our kids to, and good jobs with the people to fill them.
I want this to be the town my daughter's generation chooses to stay in, not the one they leave.
Housing you can afford. Healthcare that won't bankrupt you. Schools worth sending our kids to. Good jobs that build our communities.
A South Dakota that works for the people.
If any of this sounds like the kind of state senator you'd like representing District 34, here are the two that make the biggest difference right now: chip in, or sign up to volunteer.