Bill Janklow

William John Janklow (September 13, 1939 – January 12, 2012) was an American lawyer and politician and member of the Republican Party who holds the record for the longest tenure as Governor of South Dakota: sixteen years in office.

Janklow had the third-longest gubernatorial tenure in post-Constitutional U.S. history at 5,851 days.

His mother moved the family back to the United States, and in 1954 when Janklow was 15, they settled in her home town of Flandreau, South Dakota.

In 1955, Janklow's repeated acts of juvenile delinquency landed him in court.

A judge gave him two options—reform school or the military.

Janklow dropped out of high school and joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1956.

He attended basic training at Camp Pendleton, California.

He was then trained as a personnel clerk and assigned to the 3rd Marine Division at Camp Kinser, Okinawa.

He was part of the Marine contingent that participated in the U.S. response to the 1958 Quemoy-Matsu international crisis.

In 1999, the government of Taiwan presented Janklow the 823 Badge of Honor, an award created to commemorate the Quemoy-Matsu conflict, which began on August 23, 1958.

After leaving the Marines, Janklow began attendance at the University of South Dakota.

When administrators discovered he lacked a high school diploma, Janklow convinced them to let him remain at the university if he maintained good grades.

Janklow was shot in the leg while he was part of a detachment that was delivering cannons to Taiwanese troops, and received an honorable discharge as a private first class in 1959.

He graduated in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration.

Janklow went on to earn a J.D. at the University of South Dakota School of Law in 1966.

He then worked as Legal Services lawyer for six years on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, advancing to direct the program there.

In 1973, he was appointed chief prosecutor and chief of litigation in the South Dakota Attorney General's Office, where he "quickly earned a reputation as a top trial lawyer".

In 1974, Janklow was the successful Republican nominee for attorney general, and he served from 1975 to 1979.

Among the highlights of his term were two cases he argued before the United States Supreme Court, South Dakota v. Opperman and Rosebud Sioux Tribe v. Kneip.

In Opperman, Janklow argued successfully (5 Justices to 4) that a warrantless search of a vehicle that had been impounded for a parking violation was permissible.

(The South Dakota Supreme Court later suppressed the search on state constitutional grounds.) In Rosebud, Janklow successfully argued (6 Justices to 3) the legality of federal statutes which had reduced the size of the Rosebud Indian Reservation without regard to the provisions of existing treaties between the tribe and the federal government.

Janklow served as the 25th Attorney General of South Dakota from 1975 to 1979 before serving as the state's 27th Governor from 1979 to 1987 and then the 30th Governor from 1995 to 2003.

Janklow was then elected to the United States House of Representatives, where he served for a little more than a year.

Janklow was first elected governor in 1978.

In 1979 Janklow signed into law a bill reinstating capital punishment in South Dakota.

Another initiative that year was to abolish the state's Department of Environmental Protection, allegedly because of its role in efforts by the Sioux to block resource development in the Black Hills.

Janklow supported passage of legislation to remove South Dakota's limit on interest rates.

This attracted banks: for instance, Citibank opened a credit card center in Sioux Falls.

Several states had similar laws, overturning previous policies against high rates.

Under the federal banking rules a state had to formally invite a bank into their state, and South Dakota invited Citibank before other states.

In 1980, Janklow argued Reeves, Inc. v. Stake before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case had been initiated while he was attorney general, and Janklow argued it because he was the attorney in South Dakota's government who was most familiar with the details.

He was easily reelected in 1982 with 70.9 percent of the vote, the highest percentage won by a gubernatorial candidate in the state's history.

The legislature had repealed the personal property tax the year before he took office, but did not provide a replacement revenue source.

Since the personal property tax funded local governments, the legislature mandated that the state government replace the revenue.

Once in office, Janklow worked with the legislature to make up the lost tax income by enacting a contractor's excise tax and reforming the franchise tax on banks.

An improved economy also helped in the state's effort to make up the lost revenue.

He resigned in 2004 after being convicted of manslaughter for his culpability in a fatal automobile crash.

Janklow was born in Chicago, Illinois.

When Janklow was 10 years old his father died of a heart attack while working as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials in Germany.