A few weeks back, Kristi Noem appeared with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and in her best Dracula voice, said to the ManningCast camera, “I vant to take your abortion rights.” It wasn’t the real Noem, of course, but actor Heidi Gardner playing the South Dakota governor on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live. While the skit was all over the map, the writers did appropriately cast Noem as an emerging Republican star standing by the former president’s side.
Noem made history four years ago by becoming South Dakota’s first female governor—and has since become perhaps the state’s most famous resident. She went national two years ago, when she spurned mask mandates and championed a hands-off policy to the pandemic. It made Noem into a folk hero of sorts within the extended MAGA universe, and she emerged as one of Trump’s more visible surrogates in 2020, hosting him at Mount Rushmore for Fourth of July fireworks and landing a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. Last year, Noem talked up her political bona fides before Christian conservatives in Iowa, and speaking of her granddaughter, said, “I hate this America we are giving her.” She’s also wrapped her political persona around COVID-era policies, telling the CPAC crowd in Florida this past February, “We see fundamental freedoms evaporating because of the COVID lockdowns, but not in South Dakota. We drew a clear line.”
Though Noem has said she would support Trump if he runs in 2024, she also hasn’t ruled out a White House bid for herself. (While running for reelection, she told the Associated Press her “plans are to stay here for four years.”) Noem has certainly carried herself like someone with presidential ambitions, wading into a crowded pool of non-Trump GOP contenders. She has become a fixture on Fox News and at right-wing conferences. In June, Noem released an autobiography, Not My First Rodeo: Lessons From the Heartland, and followed up with a digital ad buy in first-to-vote states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Republicans across the country have gladly accepted her endorsement and summoned her to campaign for them––most recently Arizona’s GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, a telegenic election denier in the MAGA mold with whom Noem appeared at an event in suburban Phoenix.
But Noem’s political star turn also belies her electoral strength in South Dakota, where many voters have bristled at her apparent White House aspirations. In a year when Republicans are confidently predicting a red wave––and in a state that Trump won by more than 25 points and where “Let’s Go Brandon” flags wave across the rural landscape––Noem isn’t taking reelection for granted. Polls in the past month have fluctuated from showing Noem with a double-digit lead to running neck and neck.
A Democrat hasn’t been elected governor there since 1974, but her challenger, Jamie Smith, sees an opportunity to shock the political establishment. “This is definitely a race within our grasp,” said Smith, the minority leader in the state House of Representatives. “All of the different data that we’ve gotten has shown that it’s very, very tight.”
The surprisingly competitive campaign underscores a defining tension of Noem’s first term as governor: Her national ascent has coincided with both turbulence and divisiveness at home. She is currently working with her fifth chief of staff in four years, and has appeared to lean on a coterie of out-of-state advisers––namely, as reported by Politico, Trump loyalist Corey Lewandowski––who have brought a combative style of politics to an otherwise genial state government. In a significant escalation of intraparty conflict in the state capital, Noem supported primary challenges against a number of GOP legislators this summer. She has also been ensnared in scandal, with a state ethics board recently finding evidence of possible misconduct in Noem’s attempt to influence her daughter’s application for a real estate appraiser’s license. Noem has denied any wrongdoing.
Noem remains the favorite in her race against Smith, but even if she avoids an upset for the ages, a narrow victory may expose cracks in the springboard that vaulted her to national prominence. “It seems to me that if she wants to help herself nationally,” said David Kochel, a veteran Republican strategist, “she needs to win that race comfortably.”
Noem has been here before. It was four years ago at this time when Noem, then a little-known congresswoman, was fighting for her political life in what was South Dakota’s most competitive gubernatorial contest in a generation. Republicans have held the governor’s mansion since 1979, winning most of the races in that period by hefty margins.
But in 2018, that four-decade run of GOP dominance was in jeopardy as Noem struggled to stave off Billie Sutton, a former saddle-bronc rider who was paralyzed from the waist down at a rodeo competition when he was 23. “Two weeks before the election, we had polling that showed I was ahead,” Sutton told me. Noem pulled it out in the end, but her three-point margin of victory made it the state’s closest governor’s race since 1986. “Maybe we primed the pump four years ago and showed that she is beatable here,” Sutton said.
A real estate agent and former middle school wrestling coach, Smith has taken the baton from Sutton in mounting a challenge against Noem this year. Smith told me he had an inkling that Noem was feeling the pressure in August, when her campaign abruptly targeted him with a series of negative ads. “I tell you what, I love coaching from this position,” Smith said. “We’re running to win. We’re not running to just hold onto a lead.”
Tom Kludt
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