Rounding Up Fellow Legislators

In his free time, Will Mortenson ’16 herds cattle. During the work week, as majority leader of the South Dakota House of Representatives, he herds cats.

At age 35, Mortenson is the youngest Republican caucus leader in state history and — as a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe — he is the first Native American to lead the GOP caucus.

The Republicans have supermajorities in both houses and there is a Republican governor. Legislatively speaking, in other words, Republicans can do anything they want, which would seem to make Mortenson’s job easy.

“You might think so,” he laughed, “but we are a pretty diverse group.”

Much of that diversity comes from geography. Some members’ districts cover thousands of square miles of rural range land. Others represent places such as Sioux Falls, which is home to large meat-packing plants and corporate offices. There are social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and a few libertarians, as well.

“We tend to range from hard right to pretty hard right,” Mortenson acknowledges. “There aren’t a lot of moderates in South Dakota.”

AS MAJORITY LEADER, Mortenson does a little bit of everything: helping to set budgetary priorities, leading negotiations with the Senate, dealing with the press, raising money and serving as a liaison with the state’s nine sovereign Indian tribes.

In this year’s session, Mortenson boasts that the legislature enacted the largest tax cut in state history while expanding merit-based scholarships for higher education and approving needed infrastructure projects.

“Generating consensus positions can sometimes be a struggle,” he said, “but that’s the job.”

Mortenson grew up in Fort Pierre, a cow town across the river from the state capital, spending weekends working on his family’s ranch 70 miles to the northwest. After earning his undergraduate degree from the University of South Dakota, he managed the 2010 reelection campaign of Public Utilities Commissioner Dusty Johnson (now the state’s representative in Congress) and worked as a policy analyst for Gov. Dennis Daugaard.

Mortenson seemed assured a future in South Dakota throughout law school, and he polished his resume as a member of the Virginia Law Review and the Federalist Society. Still, for a little while at least, he entertained the possibility of staying in the East. But after getting married, he realized he wanted to return home.

“It was so liberating, not to be looking at federal clerkships or getting a job in Big Law,” Mortenson said now. “I’m sure my classmates were somewhat confused by what I was doing there, but I wouldn’t change going to UVA for the world.”

He looks back with particular fondness for his Contracts and Family Law classes with Jason Johnston and classes on tax law and Indian law with Michael Doran.

After practicing in Pierre for four years, focusing on agricultural and business law and estate planning, Mortenson was elected to the state house in 2020.

He rose rapidly.

A SELF-DESCRIBED “commonsense conservative,” he proved he could rise above partisanship when, as a freshman legislator, he introduced articles of impeachment against Republican Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg, who had killed a pedestrian while talking on his cellphone while driving.

“[T]he Attorney General is a member of the same party as me and I know him,” Mortenson said in a statement at the time. “Those facts cannot dissuade me from making this decision. We need to put principle and our people ahead of politics or our party.”

Ravnsborg was impeached by the House and later convicted by the Senate, the first person in state history to be removed from office through impeachment.

MORTENSON’S WILLINGNESS TO SPEAK OUT contributed to his election as majority leader last year—and to his role as Cat-Herder-in-Chief. The key to being an effective majority leader, he explained, is to be willing to set aside his own views in order to listen to his fellow caucus members and understand their needs.

“I try to approach everyone in a way that is restrained, cordial and respectful,” he said.

By law, the South Dakota Legislature meets for only 40 days in odd-numbered years and 35 days in even-numbered years. The rest of the time, Mortenson practices law and works at his family’s cattle ranch. His bio on X, formerly known as Twitter, says, “My heroes have always been cowboys,” and he was in the saddle himself for 11 days last May during the spring roundup.

“I’m a pretty good roper,” Mortenson acknowledged, with a dash of Great Plains modesty.

He communicates with constituents on X and through a chatty column distributed on the state news service, in which he addresses a wide range of subjects. Last March, he penned an ode to the citizen legislature, which Mortenson believes provides a model for the rest of the country.

“Our nation’s founders had a vision for how the United States was supposed to be governed: by leading citizens from each state taking a few months out of their year to come together and pass a limited set of laws before returning to live under those laws,” he wrote. “We’re just regular South Dakotans who come to the Capitol for nine weeks and do the people’s work.”