Heather Wilson joins Raven board; stock plummets

The President of South Dakota School of Mines is a crook. After sitting on Peabody Coal's board and watching it go bankrupt she's setting her sights on a South Dakota company.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D., Feb. 23, 2016 — Raven Industries (NASDAQ:RAVN) announced today that Heather Wilson has joined the Company’s Board of Directors. The appointment is effective immediately. Dr. Wilson currently serves as the President of South Dakota School of Mines & Technology in Rapid City, SD. Prior to being named President in 2013, Dr. Wilson served in the U.S. House of Representatives representing New Mexico’s first district from 1998-2009 where she was a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Dr. Wilson also previously worked as a senior advisor to several large scientific and defense companies. [press release]

Raven stock is taking a beating after missing estimated earnings.

Wilson wants to bury radioactive waste in South Dakota.

To clinch the contract extension, Sandia labs officials hired high-priced consultants — including Heather A. Wilson, the former New Mexico congresswoman, who allegedly was paid $226,000 — to write up a “contract extension strategy.” Among the tactics allegedly suggested by Wilson was “working key influencers” by targeting then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s staff, his relatives and friends, and his former colleagues at another federal lab — all with the goal of keeping Lockheed Martin in charge of Albuquerque-based Sandia. Lockheed “engaged in deep and systemic corruption, including paying Congresswoman Heather Wilson $10,000 a month starting the day after she left office for so-called consulting services that had no written work requirements.” [Washington Post]

Volcanic clays like bentonite mined near Belle Fourche make radioactive waste repositories such as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico possible. Bonus: the railroad from Belle goes right into Brookings, brought to you by Kristi Noem!

Huh, one of Heather Wilson's favorite benefactors, Albuquerque-based Valero Energy, gave Tike Mike Rounds $10,000 last cycle.

Heather Wilson is the Lydia Rodarte-Quayle of SDGOP fixerhood.

Raven has ties to New Mexico and lost stock momentum manufacturing Aerostats for surveillance instead of diversifying into ships for timber harvest.

Helium shortages are tied to the way natural gas is extracted so Wilson's ties to the oil and gas industry make her influence at Raven quite valuable.

When Black Hills Corp. greases candidates like Heather Wilson while South Dakota's Board of Minerals and Environment makes conflicts of interest harder to find and the Public Utilities Commission is stacked with Republicans, the blur of the revolving door is vertiginous.

In related news Arch Coal has abandoned its plans to strip mine Otter Creek.