PIERRE, South Dakota — The state legislature has been consumed by a freak scandal after a lawmaker reportedly went way over the line and gave a staffer unsolicited advice about COVID vaccines and breastfeeding, including a suggestion to nurse her husband.
State Senator Julie Frye-Mueller, a Republican from Rapid City, was suspended from her committee assignments last week and banned from voting after the incident was first reported to the Senate leadership.
Frye-Mueller, who belongs to a far-right caucus, is now suing to have her voting rights reinstated — even as the unnamed staffer released stunning new details about their conversation on Monday.
In a statement, the employee, who works for the Legislative Research Council, said Frye-Mueller and her husband entered her office Jan. 24. She said that after discussing the draft bill, the senator asked about her son and whether she had been vaccinated.
“I said ‘yes’ to her.” Without allowing me to elaborate, she proceeded to point her finger at me and aggressively say that this would cause him trouble,” the staffer said. She said Frye-Mueller told her people are being used as “guinea pigs for Big Pharma,” warned that she was “taking away God’s gift of immunity from your son,” and falsely claimed that the child could get Down syndrome or autism or “die from those vaccines.”
The staffer went on to say that the lawmaker asked if she was breastfeeding, and when she said she bottle-fed, she received more unwanted advice.
“I was told by Senator Frye-Mueller that my husband could ‘suck on my breasts’ to get milk. She indicated ‘that is a good time in the evening.’ She continued with hand gestures to her chest area and gestured to her husband to see if he agreed. He smiled and nodded,” she wrote.
The staffer said the senator then became even more emotional and aggressive and tearfully told her to stop vaccinating the child. She said she knew of twins who were harmed by a vaccine and asked if the woman wanted that to happen to her child. The employee told her she would think about it.
“I did so hoping the conversation would end and not upset her even more,” she wrote.
While the investigation into Frye-Mueller’s conduct went public last week, full details of the allegations did not come to light until Monday. The aide will testify behind closed doors Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Discipline and Deportation.
Republicans have complete control of South Dakota’s state government, with a 31-4 lead in the Senate and a 63-7 supermajority in the House. Republicans have been governors since 1979. Senate leaders have nominated seven Republicans and two Democrats to serve on the committee.
While they rarely have to fight with Democrats in the state House, the South Dakota GOP has a long history of family feuds. Last year, it impeached and impeached Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg, a Republican, after a lengthy investigation into a 2020 fatal accident that killed a pedestrian.
During the 2022 session, Governor Kristi Noem battled with fellow Republicans over Ravnsborg and other issues, with then-Speaker Spencer Gosch saying the governor used harsh tactics to get her way with Pierre.
Frye-Mueller, who is serving her second term, is a member of the South Dakota Freedom Caucus, which says she has been denied a fair trial.
That same argument was advanced Thursday by Lieutenant Governor Larry Rhoden, a Republican, when the Senate decided to suspend Frye-Mueller. Rhoden’s constitutional duties included presiding over the Senate, but Senators Lee Schoenbeck of Watertown and Casey Crabtree of Madison went ahead, saying Rapid City’s legislature had crossed a line.
“I don’t have a statute in front of me, and I don’t need one,” Schönbeck said. “The rules, as LRC explained to me, are that we have the ability to protect the decorum of the body.”
The Senate voted 27-6-2 to establish the special committee and then voted 27-7 to suspend Frye-Mueller.
Frye-Mueller has vowed not to resign. In her lawsuit, she is represented by Steve Haugaard, the former Speaker of the House of South Dakota, a Sioux Falls conservative who challenged Noem in a gubernatorial primary in June.
The lawsuit names Schoenbeck, a longtime Republican insider in state politics who controls the Senate as president pro tempore, as the defendant. Schoenbeck removed Frye-Mueller from the Local Government and Health and Human Services Committees on Wednesday.
Frye-Mueller said this is more about politics than proper procedure. She and Schoenbeck are both Republicans, but he ran against several conservative candidates during the 2022 election cycle, including Frye-Mueller and her Senator and ally Senator Tom Pischke of Dell Rapids.
Frye-Mueller said she considers the LRC staffer a friend and thought they were just having a conversation.
“It has come to my attention that the matter may be related to a conversation I had with staff promoting my well-known stance of medical freedom and individuals’ ability to choose their own medical treatment,” she said. last week.
South Dakota lawmakers have previously investigated one of their members for unusual behavior.
In 2017, State Representative Mathew Wollman, a Republican from Madison, resigned after admitting to having sex with two female interns during his first term.
In 2007, Senator Dan Sutton, a Democrat from Flandreau, was convicted by the Senate after a male intern and old friend of the family said the senator fondled him while the two shared a bed in a hotel room owned by Pierre in 2006.
Sutton left the legislature after a limited term. He was later elected mayor of Flandreau, and in 2020 another man made allegations of inappropriate sexual contact two decades earlier. No charges were filed and Sutton remains in office.
Frye-Mueller is still a senator, but without committee assignments and the right to vote, she is essentially powerless. She’s trying to change that by assuming the state’s long-established Republican leadership.
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