| Are there any South Dakotans in the house who can share their observations? |
h/t HotAir
[NR] - Governor Kristi Noem has cultivated a certain image — that of defiant red-state outlaw bucking the diktats of nanny-state Fauci-ism.
Her profile, in this mold, rose considerably last year when her state of South Dakota emerged as the only one never to enter coronavirus lockdowns, defying the public-health bureaucracy’s warnings of catastrophe with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation alongside fewer deaths per capita than lockdown-happy New Jersey and New York. The governor quickly began to look like a real contender in the nascent battle for the next Republican presidential nod: In February, the Associated Press reported that she raised nearly $1 million in the last quarter of 2020, only around 20 percent of which came from within South Dakota. In March, she headlined CPAC, where she placed second to Ron DeSantis in the event’s 2024 straw poll that did not include Donald Trump. In May, she officially formed a federal political action committee, dubbed the Noem Victory Fund.
South Dacota has 2366 deaths/per million compared to, say New York state with 2800 deaths/per million. Given that SD population density (the principal factor in infectious disease spreading rate) is 1/40 of NYS, I'd say little Kristi is an overachiever.
But even as she began to position herself as a national contender in the first months of 2021, Noem’s status as a rising Republican star has been dampened by a number of controversies back home. Most notably, her surprise "style-and-form" veto of House Bill 1217 — a law that would have banned biological males from competing in women’s sports — did serious damage to the young governor’s star power. The move effectively gutted the legislation and hurt her self-styled image as a staunch conservative fighter; Noem was accused of caving to the demands of the NCAA, Amazon, and the number of other powerful left-leaning corporations that had opposed the legislation. For many of those on the right who had viewed her as an island of sanity and courage, the decision was a betrayal.
But some critics in South Dakota now say this was part of an extended pattern for Noem, who has repeatedly sided with big business against social conservatives in the state legislature.
Surprise, surprise! |