“You know I’ve been to every town in this state The other guy doesn’t even want to debate Just hoping they won’t ask why he’s against the minimum wage.” —Rick Weiland, Big Wheel

South Dakota U.S. Senate candidate Rick Weiland drives a periwinkle blue Chrysler minivan in "Big Wheel," the music video summing up his campaign message: that big money special interests have taken over Washington and it's time to get them out.

“Lobbyists and political contributions are getting in the way of good healthcare reform and good energy policy that isn’t so addicted to fossil fuels, and a tax policy that tells corporations they can’t put money offshore anymore,” Weiland said in a phone interview with Occupy.com. “All of that’s being driven by a political system obsessed with big money.”

Weiland, a former senior adviser to U.S. Senator Tom Daschle, is the Democrat in a three-pronged race pitting him against Mike Rounds, the two-term Republican governor of South Dakota, and former Republican-turned-independent Larry Pressler. Since July, Weiland has closed Rounds’s 20-point lead in the polls to just a 9-point lead – a number that could quickly drop further based on this late-breaking scandal involving Rounds that was reported Wednesday.

Weiland continues to tour the state every day delivering his populist message to South Dakota voters with just under three weeks to swing them to his side. Pollsters say toss-up races like Kansas and South Dakota may be the ones that decide whether or not Republicans take control of the U.S. Senate.

While Rounds has benefited from $3.7 million in campaign donations, Weiland has just $1.09 million in his campaign war chest – $1 million of which came from Lawrence Lessig’s MayDayPAC, which crowdsourced $5 million over the summer to help Congressional candidates who have pledged to dismantle the rule of big money in Washington.

Weiland also challenged Mike Rounds to limit all individual campaign contributions to $100, which Rounds has not done. When asked about Move to Amend’s “We the People Amendment” that would eliminate constitutional rights for artificial entities like corporations and abolish money as free speech, Weiland said he “absolutely” supported it.

“I don’t believe corporations are people, and I certainly don’t believe that money is free speech,” Weiland said.

If Weiland is elected, one of the first things he promises to do is reform the farm bill to make it more equitable for smaller farmers, removing subsidies for big agriculture corporations. He also believes the Affordable Care Act doesn’t go far enough in providing healthcare to low-income Americans. Weiland supports a Medicare buy-in proposal similar to the Medicare You Can Buy Into Act, co-sponsored by Reps. Carol Shea-Porter and Alan Grayson, allowing people the option to buy into Medicare.

“That will drive down the costs of private insurance. These private insurance CEOs are making $70 million a year,” Weiland said. “But big money killed that Medicare option when the Affordable Care Act was deliberated on.”

Weiland is also one of the few U.S. Senate candidates openly talking about the problem of growing economic inequality. Weiland cited the fact that 400 Americans collectively own more wealth than the 150 million poorest Americans combined. He pointed out that in the same amount of years that inequality had skyrocketed, contributions to the political class from the richest 1 percent have gone up at almost the same rate.

“There’s a direct connection between the inequality in this country and money in politics,” Weiland said. “That’s why I got into this race.”

Weiland also took a shot at his GOP opponent for supporting policies that would make inequality even worse, calling out Mike Rounds’s support of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan that would turn Medicare into a voucher program and cut taxes for millionaires and corporations by $6 trillion over 10 years. While Rounds's website doesn't oppose the Ryan Budget's tax cuts, Rounds distances himself from the Ryan plan on the campaign trail, due to its unpopular cuts to Medicare.

“The only way they would pay for that tax cut is by taking another chunk out of the middle class. People are fed up with that,” Weiland said.

However, on the nuts and bolts of correcting that vast inequality, Weiland was noticeably cautious in offering solutions, saying he supported the proposed minimum wage increase from $7.25 to $8.50 an hour tied to inflation, which is on the ballot this fall in South Dakota. He also said he backs President Obama’s call for a $10.10 minimum wage at the federal level. However, Weiland refused to give his support to a $15 an hour minimum wage, even though that hourly rate was approved by voters in Seattle and supported by an 87 to 13 margin by Chicago voters.

According to the MIT living wage calculator, a living wage would be $16.75 an hour for a household with two adults and two children, and $20.14 an hour for a single parent with two children to support. The calculator shows that in South Dakota, $10.60 an hour, which is fifty cents an hour more than President Obama’s proposal, is considered a poverty wage for a family of four. Likewise, $8.80 an hour – thirty cents more per hour than the South Dakota proposal – is calculated as a poverty wage for a single parent supporting two kids.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has said that if the minimum wage had gone up at the same rate as worker productivity since the 1970s, it would be $22 an hour.

“I’ve seen all those numbers, and I think that’s true,” Weiland said in reference to the data. “I’m supporting this wage of $8.50 out here, and that’s what I’ve said, and that’s more my position… But I think it’s a shame that people are working two jobs and still eligible for social programs.”

Still, Rick Weiland talks a tough populist game, invoking Teddy Roosevelt’s anti-monopoly efforts during the gilded age of the early twentieth century. Weiland supports reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, dismantled under Bill Clinton in 1999, which would break up the big banks into savings-and-loan and high-risk investment banks.

He also derided big livestock’s efforts at “vertical integration” in South Dakota, in which corporate meat packers swallow up competitors, making it harder for smaller farms to sell their products on the market.

“We have to be very careful, whether it’s in agriculture, telecommunications, or financial services,” Weiland said. “We need the government to be a referee, to make sure the rules aren’t rigged in favor of the big banks, or corporate agriculture, or for corporations like Apple and Boeing to avoid paying taxes.”

On foreign policy, Weiland acknowledged that private military contractors have undue influence on Congress due to their vast campaign contributions to both parties, and cited President Dwight Eisenhower’s final warning about the military-industrial complex. However, he refused to take a hard stance on scaling back the U.S. military budget, which surpasses military spending for the eight next biggest militaries combined – China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, UK, Germany, Japan and India.

“I think you’ve got to take Eisenhower’s warning to heart. But not at the risk of not being prepared. I’ve always believed in a very strong military presence,” Weiland said.

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