State News

Watertown native to challenge Sen. Tim Johnson for office

Bert Tollefson, 77, is the third person to announce he'll vie for the GOP spot on the ticket

By The Associated Press | Saturday, September 15, 2007

SIOUX FALLS — A third person has indicated he intends to seek the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat occupied by Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson.

Bert Tollefson, 77, is a Watertown native and retired real estate agent who got 1 percent of the vote in an unsuccessful 2002 bid in the Republican primary for U.S. House of Representatives. He and several others lost to former Gov. Bill Janklow.

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Before moving to Phoenix in 1972, he had served as an assistant to South Dakota Gov. Sigurd Anderson and U.S. Rep. E.Y. Berry. He also was an assistant to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson in the Eisenhower administration, assistant administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development in the State Department and U.S. Aid Mission director in Nairobi, Kenya.

Tollefson said Friday he is in the process of moving to Sioux Falls.

The other two men who have indicated they plan to run for the GOP nomination are state Rep. Joel Dykstra of Canton and Spearfish businessman Sam Kephart.

Johnson, who’s up for re-election next year, returned to the Senate last week for the first time since December, when he suffered a life-threatening brain hemorrhage. He has not yet formally declared his candidacy for re-election but has said he intends to run.

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