Joe Kirby

Joe Kirby is an election reform advocate with a long history of working to make government in his home city and state more effective. Many of the problems we see in politics nationally are a result of the partisan primary process. Currently, Kirby is leading an effort to put top-two open primaries on the 2024 South Dakota ballot. South Dakota will be a better place when more voters are involved in the political process.

Kirby is a fourth generation Sioux Falls resident, and lives downtown with his wife Jenny and their two dogs. They have kids and grandkids in South Dakota and in California. Joe attended Augustana and the University of South Dakota law school and became both a Certified Public Accountant and lawyer. He then served as CEO of Western Surety Company, a multigenerational family-owned insurance business, that was recently sold.

Since then, Kirby has stayed busy golfing, traveling, volunteering and giving. He also enjoys facilitating planning sessions for nonprofits lacking strategic plans. But mostly, Kirby is a government reform advocate. As one of the leaders of a successful 1990s effort to modernize our Sioux Falls city government, Joe witnessed firsthand the remarkable benefits resulting from the change. Their community is thriving due in no small way to the change. So now he’s hooked.

“In my experience, government tends to resist the sort of continuous improvement needed for survival in business and nonprofits. That’s why I am a fan of consolidation, open primaries, ranked choice voting, local control, home rule and government modernization. I encourage the adoption of better approaches and systems for government, both election systems and structural improvements. It’s a slow, upstream process.”