Two years ago, Kristi Noem was one of the GOP’s most promising rising stars. The first-term South Dakota governor became a conservative darling in the early months of the pandemic, attracting national attention for her state’s refusal to lock down. In the ensuing twelve months, Noem snagged headline speaking slots at top-billing conservative events such as the Republican National Convention and the Conservative Political Action Conference. Her campaign war chest swelled with out-of-state money, and a federal political-action committee dubbed the “Noem Victory Fund” quietly surfaced in the early months of 2021. Conservative media hailed the new governor as a hero. “She is one of the few politicians, even among Republicans, who is unapologetically conservative,” Evita Duffy beamed in the Federalist.
Less than three months later, the same publication was running articles blasting Noem as “a worthless GOP leader who has no business calling herself a conservative.” In a matter of days, Noem’s goodwill with conservatives had evaporated. The governor’s March 2021 misstep on transgender athletes will go down as one of the most damaging unforced errors by a rising political star in recent memory: Days after tweeting that she was “excited to sign” a bill barring biological men from competing in women’s sports, she reneged, issuing a “style-and-form” veto that gutted the bill’s enforcement mechanisms. When Republicans in the state legislature refused to accept the revisions, the legislation died. In the eyes of many social conservatives, the mistake was unforgivable.
Comments