Legislature ditches ‘Crossover Day’ tradition to honor colleague, raise cancer awareness

Assistant Senate Majority Leader Mike Diedrich remains sidelined

PIERRE — Each February, during the seventh week of the South Dakota legislative session, state lawmakers wear black.

It’s a light-hearted tradition recognizing what’s known as “Crossover Day,” the deadline for proposed bills to get passed out of their chamber of origin. In other words, if a Senate bill isn’t sent to the House by the end of Crossover Day, it’s dead. And vice versa with House bills.

But this year, legislators are setting aside the tradition of black attire and instead donning blue in honor of Sen. Mike Diedrich, the Rapid City statesman who’s been absent from session since January as he fights colon cancer.

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“Blue is the ribbon color for colon cancer. Today, while doing our legislative battles, we are dressed in solidarity with our brother Mike in his cancer battle,” Senate President Pro Tempore Lee Schoenbeck told The Dakota Scout.

Diedrich, the Assistant Majority Leader in the Senate, has been battling the cancer since at least last year, but left session in January due to a blood clot that required emergency surgery. He intended to return to the legislative session, but his illness has persisted and ultimately kept him from rejoining his colleagues in Pierre.

“It’s our way of telling our colleague and friend that we miss him in the Senate chambers, and that we continue to hold him and his family in our thoughts and prayers,” Senate Majority Leader Casey Crabtree said.

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