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A former Republican senator is endorsing Hillary Clinton for president after the mass shooting in Orlando, citing her support for gun control. Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.) called for universal background checks on all gun sales and an assault weapons ban Monday in the wake of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. "I can't believe I'm endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, but I am," said Pressler, who spoke with The Hill on Monday after endorsing Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, in a statement issued over the weekend.... He said he feels disenfranchised by Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican...

A former Republican senator is endorsing Hillary Clinton for president after the mass shooting in Orlando, Fla., citing her support for gun control. Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.) called for universal background checks on all gun sales and an assault weapons ban Monday in the wake of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. “I can’t believe I’m endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, but I am,” said Pressler, who spoke with The Hill on Monday after endorsing Clinton in a statement issued over the weekend. “This morning, I woke up and told my wife, ‘Did I really do that?’” he...

Some polling earlier this month suggested that the South Dakota Senate race might be unexpectedly competitive, but a new poll shows Republican candidate Mike Rounds with a significant lead 10 days before the election. Rounds is taking 43 percent of the vote, according to the NBC/Marist poll released Sunday. Democratic candidate Rick Weiland is at 29 percent and former GOP Sen. Larry Pressler, now running as an independent, is polling at 16 percent.

South Dakota state Rep. Stace Nelson (R) met with a handful of national conservative groups last week in Washington — an indication they continue to search for a challenger to former Gov. Mike Rounds (R) in the state’s open Senate race. The Republican primary field is already wide, and a bruising contest could jeopardize a pickup that is crucial to GOP efforts to take back the Senate in 2014. Nelson met with Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) office, Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist and the Club for Growth. “To say things went well is an understatement,” Nelson told The Hill....

Public Policy Polling’s newest South Dakota Senate poll finds that Mike Rounds’ support has dropped all the way down to 35% in the wake of voter anger over the EB-5 scandal, and that Rick Weiland continues to be better liked and within single digits of Rounds. Key findings from the poll include: -Rounds is at just 35% to 28% for Weiland, 24% for Larry Pressler, and 8% for Gordon Howie. A majority of South Dakotans have a negative opinion of Rounds, with just 41% rating him favorably to 51% with an unfavorable opinion. Weiland’s favorability, at a positive 42/38 spread,...

Former Gov. Mike Rounds has acknowledged he made an inaccurate statement in written testimony he sent to lawmakers last week, and now he wants to change that testimony. Rounds sent a letter Thursday to state Sen. Larry Tidemann, R-Brookings, the chairman of the Legislature’s Operations and Audit Committee. In the letter, Rounds seeks permission to amend one of his earlier written responses to the committee’s questions about state involvement in the federal EB-5 immigrant-investor program. In the answers Rounds sent to legislators last week, he wrote that “the governor’s office was not served” with papers regarding an EB-5 related lawsuit...

Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-SD), a Vietnam veteran who served in Congress for more than two decades, said Tuesday on Current TV that the movement for marriage equality is much like the movement for racial equality, and confidently declared that the Republican Party is now in the process of making the right to marry “the new conservative position.” “The main thing that caused me to change my mind was my work with veterans groups,” he told “Viewpoint” host John Fugelsang, explaining that he’s worked with a gay couple who want to marry and have a family. “It’s something like in...

Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), who was the first Vietnam veteran to serve in the United States Senate, is the latest Republican to back Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, Politico learned Sunday. Pressler, who said that in addition to casting an absentee ballot for Obama he'd donated $500 to the Illinois senator's campaign, cited the Democrat's response to the financial crisis as the primary reason for his decision. "I just got the feeling that Obama will be able to handle this financial crisis better, and I like his financial team of [former Treasury Secretary Robert] Rubin and [former Federal Reserve...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- In 1996, Jim Jordan, campaign manager for Democrat presidential contender Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), was press secretary for Tim Johnson during his challenge to then-incumbent Sen. Larry Pressler (R-SD). The long, negative campaign resulted in the end of the South Dakota Republican's 22 years in Congress. During the campaign, Pressler was dogged by questions about his health, since his father suffered with Alzheimer's disease. But the most damaging attack was delivered by James Abourezk, the man Pressler replaced in the Senate in 1978. Abourezk brought Alexander Cockburn, author of "Washington Babylon" to speak to a Sioux...