SALON

Thursday, Jan 12, 2012 6:09 PM UTC

Former SD Gov., US Rep. Bill Janklow Dead At 72

By

Topics: From the Wires,

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — Bill Janklow, a flamboyant politician who left a lasting mark on South Dakota politics by serving four terms as governor but resigned as the state’s congressman after causing a fatal traffic accident, died Thursday. He was 72.

Janklow died shortly before 11 a.m. Thursday of brain cancer after being moved to hospice care in Sioux Falls earlier in the week, his son Russ Janklow said. Bill Janklow had announced in November that he had inoperable cancer.

Janklow, a Republican, dominated South Dakota government for more than a quarter century, inspiring both fierce support and criticism. Even his political opponents admitted he got things done, though they decried his combative nature.

He was credited with saving rail service in the state, attracting credit card banks and leading the nation in connecting classrooms to the Internet.

“I’m an action-oriented person,” Janklow once said. “I’m just more hyper than most people.”

William J. Janklow was born Sept. 13, 1939, in Chicago. After the death of his father, who helped prosecute Nazis for war crimes, his mother moved the family to her hometown of Flandreau, S.D.

Janklow got in trouble in high school — a time he said he was “raising a lot of hell” — so he left to join the U.S. Marines.

He talked his way into the University of South Dakota, even though he had not graduated from high school, and he received a law degree from the school in 1966.

Janklow represented poor clients on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in 1966-1973, and the state hired him to prosecute members of the American Indian Movement for a riot at the Custer County Courthouse.

He was elected South Dakota attorney general in 1974 and governor in 1978, serving two four-year terms. He won re-election in 1982 by the widest margin in any gubernatorial race in state history, taking nearly 71 percent of the vote. He was elected governor again in 1994 and 1998, and he won election in 2002 as South Dakota’s lone member of the U.S. House.

Janklow said he was always ready to fight for South Dakota and anything else he believed in.

He said he had a sign on the wall of the governor’s office that said: “Dear God, please grant me patience — and I want it right now.”

His critics labeled his style as governor dictatorial, but supporters pointed to his results.

While governor the first two terms, from 1979-1986, Janklow engineered South Dakota’s purchase of rail line to save rail service in the state, got state interest-rate laws changed to lure Citibank and other credit card banks, and persuaded the Legislature to convert the University of South Dakota-Springfield campus into a prison.

He also negotiated a deal to sell Missouri River water to a company that wanted to build a slurry pipeline to ship Wyoming coal to southern states. The project failed, but South Dakota got $5 million out of the deal.

In 1986, Janklow lost the Republican Senate primary to the incumbent, Jim Abdnor. He then joined an investment firm and later entered a private law practice.

In 1995, after being elected governor again, Janklow persuaded the Legislature to pass his plan for cutting property taxes. He also won approval for building a new women’s prison and facilities for juvenile offenders. In his second stint as governor, he won praise for making South Dakota a national leader in connecting classrooms in every school district to the Internet.

Janklow was elected to Congress in 2002, but was convicted of manslaughter in a traffic accident and never completed the term.

Janklow said the accident that killed motorcyclist Randy Scott of Hardwick, Minn., on Aug. 16, 2003, in Moody County north of Sioux Falls was his only regret. After attending an event in Aberdeen, Janklow was driving back to his home in Brandon when he sped through a stop sign.

“If I had to do it over, I’d do everything I did, but I’d stop at a stop sign,” Janklow said, breaking into tears, when he announced he had brain cancer.

A jury convicted Janklow of second-degree manslaughter and three other charges, and he served 100 days behind bars.

Part of his defense was that as a diabetic, his senses and reflexes were dulled from low blood sugar and that he missed the early warning signs because a heart medication masked them.

In his leisure time, Janklow liked boating and listening to his large collection of 1950s rock ‘n’ roll records. He once bragged he was “the best fat-man water skier in South Dakota.”

Janklow married his wife, Mary Dean, in 1960. They had three children.

Funeral arrangements were pending.

___

Associated Press

More Chet Browkaw.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations