Source: Politics<\/p>\n
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. \u2014 One Saturday last fall, around the opening of South Dakota\u2019s pheasant hunting season, a crowd of businesspeople and political benefactors who\u2019d come to meet and hunt with the state\u2019s governor, Kristi Noem, trickled back to the Sheraton for dinner and an auction.<\/p>\n
The whole weekend had been billed as a business recruiting event for South Dakota, and auction proceeds went to conservation efforts<\/a> in the state. But the vibe was almost indistinguishable from a typical political fundraiser: an evening, closed to the press, where donors mingled with political staffers, where a governor thanked supporters, and where Tim Laudner, the retired Minnesota Twins catcher and hunting enthusiast<\/a>, got held up for handshakes at the door \u2014 the mix of celebrity and personal access that defines a modern political career.<\/p>\n Projected on a screen in a ballroom was an autographed photograph of Noem and Donald Trump, which sold for $12,500. An Indian Motorcycle Super Chief Limited that Noem rode at the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D., brought $27,500. There was a print of Noem on horseback; there was a rifle she\u2019d hunted with. And you could also buy time with a politician who is widely considered a credible potential candidate for president or, more likely, vice president in 2024.<\/p>\n One donor paid $60,000 for a black bear hunt with Noem in Saskatchewan. (The auction program promised this would include not only \u201cone of the best all-inclusive bear hunts Canada has to offer,\u201d but also \u201cspending time\u201d with Noem.) Bids for a \u201cguided trophy bison bull hunt\u201d with Noem at Ted Turner\u2019s Bad River Ranch in South Dakota topped out at $50,000.<\/p>\n Slipping out of the ballroom mid-auction and into the lobby, one of Noem\u2019s guests rolled her eyes. \u201cI left when the painting of Kristi went up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The weekend did, in fact, amount to a lot of Noem, from \u201cGovernor Noem\u2019s Invitational Pheasant Hunt\u201d to \u201cGovernor Noem\u2019s South Dakota Showcase,\u201d to the dinner and auction, where Noem addressed supporters in front of an image of a pheasant taking flight. At \u201cGovernor Noem\u2019s Acoustic Experience<\/a>,\u201d a small concert that immediately followed the auction, Gary LeVox, of Rascal Flatts fame<\/a>, addressed Noem as \u201cpresident,\u201d then paused before correcting himself, \u201cgovernor.\u201d<\/p>\n A star of the coronavirus pandemic, Noem had become an unexpected Republican sensation in 2020 and into last year, at the height of partisan warring over the pandemic. As she theatrically defied mask and vaccine mandates and cast South Dakota as a \u201cbeacon of hope<\/a>\u201d for the skeptical and recalcitrant, she became a staple on Fox. CNN branded her \u201cthe female Trump<\/a>,\u201d while Trump himself encouraged Noem to primary her state\u2019s \u201cRINO\u201d senior senator, John Thune (an invitation Noem declined<\/a>). GOP state and county party chairs in early presidential nominating states began inviting Noem to speak at their events, and her stock rose among the Conservative Political Action Conference set. Last summer, she earned a personal takedown<\/a> in the impeccably parlor-liberal pages of Vanity Fair \u2014 a badge of honor for any Republican.<\/p>\n But sustaining the GOP\u2019s interest has proved more difficult as the pandemic lingers on. Noem has some built-in disadvantages as a national candidate: Her tiny state is not a locus of coastal media attention; its small agricultural economy limits her natural fundraising base. And even in South Dakota, Noem has suffered from a shift in public focus from Covid freedom to concerns that have proved harder for her to manage. She\u2019s the target of a conflict-of-interest probe<\/a> involving her daughter, Kassidy Peters; she waffled on legislation<\/a> to ban transgender women and girls from playing women\u2019s sports; she fumbled in the GOP\u2019s curriculum wars, delaying a closely watched review<\/a> of the state\u2019s social studies standards. And she cut loose a close adviser, Corey Lewandowski<\/a>, following accusations the former Trump campaign manager made unwanted sexual advances toward a woman at a charity event last year.<\/p>\n Two years from the next presidential election, what does Noem have her sights on, exactly? Normally, you might say she\u2019s testing the waters for president, one of a generation of up-and-coming red state leaders positioning themselves as antidotes to a second Joe Biden term. But in the time of Trump, with a celebrity kingmaker still firmly in charge of the GOP, she\u2019s also running to stay on his radar as a potential asset.<\/p>\n In Mar-a-Lago \u2014 where, if Trump runs in 2024, Noem\u2019s fate as a running mate or potential Cabinet secretary will be decided \u2014 one Trump ally told me that there is a widely held appreciation for Noem\u2019s \u201cstar quality.\u201d If Trump runs and decides to select a woman as a running mate, Noem may benefit from critical comments<\/a> Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador, made about Trump following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol last year.<\/p>\n \u201cUnless she blows up,\u201d this person said, \u201cshe kind of hangs in there.\u201d<\/p>\n But there is also a sense in Trumpworld, after watching Noem\u2019s first term as governor, that she may not be seasoned enough for a national campaign, another person close to Trump\u2019s operation said. She is being compared with Vice President Kamala Harris, a young politician with star potential but whose low approval ratings and office turmoil<\/a> have not helped \u2014 and may be a drag on \u2014 her boss. \u201cThere\u2019s a feeling she\u2019s not ready,\u201d this person said.<\/p>\n Noem\u2019s Covid-charged rise in the Republican Party came on almost instantly, then sputtered \u2014 and now she finds herself a case study in how quickly a politician can build, and then fix, a reputation in her own party.<\/p>\n Not long ago \u2014 before her anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine mandate evangelism turned her into a conservative sensation \u2014 Noem was barely recognizable outside of South Dakota, and polled tepidly even inside her own, small state. Speaking at CPAC early last year, she said, \u201cMy guess is that a year ago, most of you had no idea who I was.\u201d<\/p>\n In South Dakota, the attention Noem drew to herself initially was jarring. The state\u2019s encounters with presidential ambition have been infrequent and short. There was the late Sen. George McGovern, the Democratic presidential candidate who got walloped by Richard Nixon in 1972; there\u2019s Thune, who was seen as <\/a>a potential candidate for president<\/a> a decade ago and seriously considered it, but said \u201cthe timing did not feel right.<\/a>\u201d And for eight years, South Dakotans had become accustomed to a proudly unglamorous governor, Dennis Daugaard, who was generally well-regarded but so stiff he once listed \u201ccareful and responsible management<\/a>\u201d as his governing goal.<\/p>\n And then they got Noem, a politician who seems preternaturally suited to the folksy-yet-brazen style of modern heartland politics. She has a telegenic ease in crowds, and has developed a certain Trumpian flair: When the then-president visited South Dakota for its Independence Day celebration in 2020, she curried his favor by presenting him with a bust depicting him on Mount Rushmore<\/a>. She promoted the massive Sturgis motorcycle rally<\/a> amid a pandemic and campaigned around the country for Trump<\/a>. When she went to a Republican Governors Association meeting in Tennessee last year, she flew there on the private jet<\/a> of Mike Lindell, the pillow salesman and GOP conspiracy theorist-in-chief<\/a>.<\/p>\n For South Dakota, Noem has been a skillful ambassador, and her Republican supporters see her as the face of the state\u2019s current boom. The state\u2019s unemployment rate is among the lowest in the nation<\/a>. Table cards at the auction in Sioux Falls asked, \u201cLooking for a Home?\u201d touting South Dakota as a place with \u201ctons of opportunity,\u201d a favorable tax climate, low cost of living and \u201cno red tape in sight.\u201d On the weekend of the governor\u2019s hunt, bars and restaurants brimmed with out-of-towners drinking Busch beer, throwing darts and eating chislic, the cubed meat dish that\u2019s effectively South Dakota\u2019s official bar snack. Masks were nearly nonexistent and hunters fanned out on rural roads in trucks with out-of-state plates.<\/p>\n \u201cShe just went out there and pounded the sticks for South Dakota, and boy, it worked,\u201d said Bill Napoli, a former Republican state lawmaker from Rapid City. \u201cWe have more people moving here, and we don\u2019t even know what the numbers are going to be as far as an influx of people visiting.\u201d<\/p>\n He said, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to remember something: South Dakota has been 50th in everything for as long as everyone can remember. We were just a nice, quiet, docile state that never did anything. \u2026 She thrust us into the national limelight.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet as alluring as Noem has been for conservatives amid the pandemic, politics shifts as fast as issues do, and \u201copen for business\u201d isn\u2019t likely to be enough of a message for Noem when the public\u2019s interest in Covid fades. Republicans watching the gubernatorial election in Virginia in November saw Covid fall off as a voting issue<\/a>, surpassed by education and the economy and jobs. Even now, with the omicron variant surging, polling nationally suggests the pandemic is subsiding as a concern<\/a>. For a politician who made her name on Covid, the question is what to do when the electorate moves on to other things. And Noem is struggling with something that bedevils a lot of ambitious state politicians: how to go big, or national, without seeming like they\u2019re losing their touch at home. <\/p>\n \u201cShe got the Covid response exactly right in terms of how we feel about things back here, so that gives her some room to overcome some of her missteps,\u201d said Mark Mickelson, a former South Dakota House speaker who supported Noem\u2019s election in 2018. \u201cHer getting this national profile and staying on Fox News and us staying open for business has been really good for South Dakota. \u2026 We\u2019re in the conversation, and our state is booming right now.\u201d<\/p>\n But lately, said Mickelson, whose father and grandfather were both governors of South Dakota, Noem \u201cappears to be focused primarily on her own personal ambition, and there\u2019s some concern that she\u2019s neglecting things back home in South Dakota.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s going to have to start executing better,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Noem\u2019s affiliation with Lewandowski exasperated staffers in an administration already afflicted by high turnover<\/a>, and was seen by numerous Republicans in South Dakota as a mistake. Noem\u2019s former chief of staff, Joshua Shields, cautioned her that Lewandowski\u2019s presence was a liability before Shields left her office at the beginning of 2020<\/a>, according to multiple Republicans familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n Late last year, Steve Haugaard, a Republican state representative and former speaker of the state House, announced a 2022 primary challenge to Noem, casting her as a jet-setting shill for corporate interests. \u201cWe need a full-time governor who\u2019s focused on South Dakota, not on Washington D.C.,\u201d he said<\/a>. <\/p>\n Republican lawmakers in South Dakota have been looking into conflict-of-interest questions<\/a> involving Noem following an Associated Press report<\/a> that she summoned employees of a state agency to her office after they\u2019d moved to deny her daughter\u2019s application to become a certified real estate appraiser, an application that ultimately was approved. Noem has denied the meeting was improper, accusing the media of \u201ctrying to destroy my children<\/a>.\u201d But lawmakers were not convinced.<\/p>\n Spencer Gosch, the Republican state House speaker who was in a combine harvesting soybeans when I reached him, said \u201cthe specifics surrounding the circumstances are a little bit, how do I want to put this, they\u2019re less than ideal.\u201d Last fall, Kassidy Peters said she would give up her license.<\/a><\/p>\n In theory, Noem\u2019s political horizon could be a long one. She turned 50 last year. She will likely win reelection in November. The black bear hunt with Noem in Saskatchewan is scheduled for May 2023, at the start of the presidential election cycle. And for a small-state governor, Noem already has enviable reach.<\/p>\n She is a regular on Fox News<\/a>, thanks in part to the state installing a TV studio in the basement of South Dakota\u2019s Capitol building<\/a> shortly after she took office. (In another spate of redecorating, the Argus Leader reported in November that Noem spent \u201cmore than $68,000 in taxpayer money on rugs, sauna, chandeliers for state governor\u2019s mansion<\/a>.\u201d) She has Breitbart\u2019s devoted interest<\/a>. She traveled recently to Ronald Reagan\u2019s old ranch in Santa Barbara, Calif., to participate in a town hall on Newsmax<\/a>, where host Rob Schmitt said she has a \u201clot in common\u201d with the former president.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody says, \u2018We absolutely love your governor,\u2019\u201d said Jack Haines, whose Rapid City-based company, A&A Engraving Inc., was in Sioux Falls previewing its Colt 1911 pistol with \u201cLet\u2019s go Brandon\u201d engraved on the barrel. (Haines said he\u2019d considered putting a caricature of Biden on the gun, before deciding that might be \u201cgoing a little bit too far.\u201d)<\/p>\n When I asked Republicans about Noem in Sioux Falls and in Watertown, around where she grew up, I was told \u201cshe\u2019s a hell of a woman,\u201d or she\u2019s \u201cjust like Sarah Palin,\u201d or \u201ca real South Dakotan.\u201d Her supporters warmly recite the biographical sketch that Noem is now road-testing nationally \u2014 how she returned from college to the family farm after her father was killed in a farm accident; how she recently became a grandmother; how she connects her granddaughter to the Democratic president. <\/p>\n \u201cListen, I hate, I hate the world that we are giving her,\u201d Noem said at a CPAC event last year. \u201cI need you to help me save America.\u201d And in South Dakota, a heavily Republican but tiny state of fewer than 900,000 people, the prospect of a President Noem or Vice President Noem doing just that is a point of pride.<\/p>\n \u201cShe should be president, actually,\u201d said Loren Beld, whose excavating business now occupies an old school building in Hazel, S.D., that Noem once attended. \u201cFollow right in Donald Trump\u2019s footsteps. Kristi Noem has the same policies, same political view, but she\u2019s a little nicer.\u201d<\/p>\n But unlike Trump, Noem has to govern a state, which even in a pandemic means more than fighting Biden\u2019s Covid policy. As her profile has risen, the conservative press has found missteps there to pounce on. Fox\u2019s Tucker Carlson accused Noem last year of \u201ccaving\u201d<\/a> to business interests when she balked at a bill to ban transgender women and girls from playing women\u2019s sports, instead issuing a partial veto and signing executive measures that the bill\u2019s sponsor called \u201cweak.\u201d<\/a> National Review savaged Noem when her administration began a review of state social studies standards, a process that has drawn criticism from both liberals and conservatives in South Dakota. (National Review asserted that under Noem\u2019s management, \u201chard-left activists have taken over the writing of K-12 history and civics standards in ruby-red South Dakota.<\/a>\u201d) And it was a conservative website \u2014 the pro-Trump site American Greatness \u2014 that, in late September, smeared Noem with the accusation, based on unnamed sources, that she was having an extramarital affair with Lewandowski<\/a>. Other outlets, finding no evidence of an affair, might have let the story go, but then Noem addressed it herself: She said on Twitter<\/a> that \u201cthese rumors are total garbage and a disgusting lie.\u201d It was then, officially, news.<\/a><\/p>\n For Noem, it\u2019s this criticism from conservative media that presents the biggest risk \u2014 a reminder of the exacting purity tests that a still-Trump-obsessed GOP is imposing on candidates at all levels. Perhaps because of those attacks, among her supporters and advisers in South Dakota, there is a distrust of the media and protectiveness that borders on paranoia. Ian Fury, Noem\u2019s spokesperson, declined to make Noem available for an interview, or even to let reporters in to cover her remarks at the auction, which did not exactly constitute Watergate-level material. (According to a recording of part of her speech provided by an attendee, Noem asserted that preserving outdoor traditions like hunting and fishing is good for children and that, \u201cIt really is about our kids.\u201d) <\/p>\n The day after the auction, when Noem was scheduled to attend what the state Republican Party billed as a \u201cpublic lunch\u201d in Elk Point, S.D., I was turned back at the door again. And after I\u2019d arranged with a teacher at Noem\u2019s old high school, in Hayti, to review yearbooks from her time there, a district official called to tell me that the district\u2019s policy was not to make old yearbooks available after all.<\/p>\n One of the yearbooks, from Noem\u2019s graduating year, 1990, is online<\/a>, and it would hardly seem problematic. One can see Noem acted in a school play, spoke at commencement \u2014 and, with several of her classmates, sang Whitney Houston\u2019s \u201cOne Moment in Time.\u201d She was an honor student, an editor of the school newspaper, a cheerleader<\/a> and played basketball. Near the back of the book is a photograph of her with the Pontiac Grand Am<\/a> she won when she was named South Dakota Snow Queen<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible that Noem\u2019s recent run of friction and bad publicity will turn out to be nothing more than a blip. She is widely expected to beat Haugaard in the primary and win reelection, and 2024 is still an eternity away. But the Trump ally\u2019s suggestion that she still could \u201cblow up\u201d is not unfounded. Noem has come perilously close to doing so before. A rising star in the Republican Party since 2010, when she upset the state\u2019s then-Democratic Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in the Tea Party wave that saw Republicans pick up more than 60 House seats nationally, Noem nearly lost the gubernatorial election for the GOP in 2018.<\/p>\n In a state where Republicans have won every gubernatorial race since 1978, an Argus Leader-KELO TV poll<\/a> two weeks before the election, had Noem tied with Billie Sutton, a moderate Democrat and former rodeo rider. It took what the state\u2019s Argus Leader newspaper called \u201ca GOP rescue party<\/a>\u201d to save her campaign, and Noem ultimately won by just over 11,000 votes<\/a>. <\/p>\n Nor were there special signs, pre-Covid, that Noem possessed political talent as a governor. Her first year in office, she launched a widely ridiculed anti-drug campaign with the slogan: \u201cMeth. We\u2019re on it.\u201d <\/a>She feuded with the Republican-controlled state Legislature over her opposition to legalizing industrial hemp<\/a>, an issue on which she later relented, and tribal leaders banned her from the state\u2019s sprawling Pine Ridge Reservation<\/a> in response to her support for so-called riot-boosting laws that opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline said unfairly targeted them.<\/p>\n By the end of her first year in office, Noem was one of the least popular governors in America, with an approval rating of 43 percent, according to Morning Consult<\/a>. At least one private poll at the time had her falling even lower, to just below 40 percent, according to multiple people familiar with the poll.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were really starting to worry she was screwing this up bad,\u201d said one Republican in the state. \u201cIt was like a five-alarm fire. \u2026 Prior to the pandemic, she was in deep shit.\u201d<\/p>\n Covid, more than for any other Republican politician in America, was Noem\u2019s salvation. As caseloads took off in her state<\/a>, she transformed into a middle-America champion of the GOP\u2019s resistance to mask and vaccine mandates and stay-at-home orders, and to their personification in Anthony Fauci.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cShe got on the Trump bandwagon and she completely changed,\u201d Napoli said. \u201cEither she went to Trump school or whatever Trump had rubbed off on her, or she had a latent conservative part of her body that nobody knew about, and all of a sudden she was just a bar- burning conservative that nobody knew was in there.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, \u201cAnd she\u2019s been kicking ass ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n By last summer, Noem was using her Covid credentials to not only raise her own profile, but to undercut other Republican governors in what is already a crowded field of potential candidates for president in 2024. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got Republican governors across this country pretending they didn\u2019t shut down their states, that they didn\u2019t close their beaches, that they didn\u2019t mandate masks, that they didn\u2019t issue shelter-in-places,\u201d she said at CPAC\u2019s event in Texas in July. \u201cNow, I\u2019m not picking fights with Republican governors. All I\u2019m saying is that we need leaders with grit, that their first instinct is to make the right decision. That they don\u2019t backtrack and then try to fool you into the fact that they never made the wrong decision. So, demand honesty from your leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n Back home in South Dakota, Noem\u2019s critics fumed. It was true Noem never issued a statewide shelter-in-place order. But she was not entirely hands-off, either. In April 2020, Noem issued an executive order requiring people with serious underlying medical conditions and those over 65 in two hard-hit counties, Minnehaha and Lincoln, to stay home if possible. On top of that, her administration proposed legislation<\/a> that would have granted the state\u2019s health secretary the authority to order the closure of any public or private place, including businesses, schools or other locations, to prevent the spread of the virus. It was Republican legislators who rejected that idea.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s not the governor that people think she is,\u201d said Taffy Howard, a state representative and conservative hard-liner who has clashed with Noem<\/a> and is challenging Dusty Johnson, the state\u2019s Republican congressman, in his House primary this year.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody\u2019s like, \u2018We love your governor, she didn\u2019t shut down your state,\u2019\u201d Howard said. \u201cIt\u2019s the conservatives in the House that did not shut down the state \u2026 We forced her into a corner.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe is very much a politician. She goes whichever way the wind blows,\u201d Howard said.<\/p>\n Howard\u2019s view of Noem is now in the minority. The governor\u2019s approval rating among Republicans in South Dakota, according to Morning Consult, jumped 8 percentage points last year<\/a>, to 86 percent. And after nearly two years of watching her resist lockdowns \u2014 including some proposed by Republicans \u2014 her credibility on the conservative approach to Covid appears firm. In Sioux Falls, the Republican mayor, Paul TenHaken, who publicly called for a shelter-in-place order in 2020, putting him at odds with Noem, <\/a>began a conversation with me by saying, \u201cI\u2019m not interested in engaging in any hit piece on our governor.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think in some areas of the country, there\u2019s almost a jealousy that creeps in: \u2018We have to wear masks and we have to do this stuff, so you do, too,\u2019\u201d TenHaken said. \u201cIn South Dakota, we are a fairly humble state, and so when someone like our governor gets national attention and starts to get the spotlight on her \u2026 there are some people who don\u2019t like that.\u201d<\/p>\n He said, \u201cShe is one tough lady, because that lady gets more crap thrown her way than any politician I\u2019ve ever seen at her level. It\u2019s been a tough year, and she\u2019s just resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n To TenHaken, there is more to Noem than Covid. He described her as a \u201cwoman of faith,\u201d a \u201cwoman of values,\u201d and a politician who \u201chas a heart for preserving what has made South Dakota great \u2014 the outdoors, the hunting, the freedom.\u201d He recalled that when Noem visited Sioux Falls to tour damage after tornadoes ripped through the town in 2019, he complimented her on her Nobull sneakers. The following week, she\u2019d sent him a pair in his size.<\/p>\n \u201cI was like, ‘Wow, what an incredibly thoughtful thing to do in the midst of this chaos,’\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s a side of Kristi Noem I wish more people would see.\u201d<\/p>\n Noem was not wearing sneakers, but boots, a jean jacket and black gloves when, on the day of the auction in Sioux Falls, she drove to Brookings for South Dakota State University\u2019s eclectic Hobo Day parade<\/a>. <\/p>\n While Johnson rallied college Republicans at their float \u2014 \u201cGood energy \u2026 I love it!\u201d \u2014 and Thune walked up ahead, Noem crisscrossed the parade route, past Nick\u2019s Hamburger Shop, Brookings Furniture Co. and the Main Street Pub.<\/p>\n \u201cHow are you?\u201d she\u2019d ask, or \u201cYou doing good?\u201d She told a handful of young women to \u201cstay warm, guys,\u201d and when she greeted five little girls, she gave them high-fives.<\/p>\n \u201cLook at all these girls,\u201d Noem said. \u201cLove it!\u201d<\/p>\n The response to Noem from the sidewalks was at times misogynistic. A college student yelled at her, \u201cKristi, you\u2019re so hot!\u201d A man standing with a female companion catcalled at her.<\/p>\n But then came two teenage girls, bolting out of a store when they saw Noem walk past and tracking her to the end of the parade route, where they waited to take a photo with her before she climbed into the back of an SUV. One elderly woman told Noem, \u201cWe\u2019re so proud of you,\u201d while Layke Wold, a 15-year-old with a fan page for Noem on Instagram<\/a>, jumped from his seat to pose with her in his \u201cNoem-DeSantis \u201824\u201d shirt.<\/p>\n When an older man yelled, \u201cKristi for president!\u201d she gently flicked her wrist and said, \u201cDon\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Outside of South Dakota, Republicans see some potential for Noem \u2014 as a presidential candidate if Trump doesn\u2019t run in 2024, or as a vice presidential prospect if he does. Several county party officials in the early nominating states of Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada told me they\u2019ve tried or are trying to book her for events. In Nevada, the state party chair, Michael McDonald, said that when he polls activists about who should headline party functions, \u201cThey all say Kristi Noem.\u201d<\/p>\n But there are signs that Noem is already suffering from the public\u2019s weariness of pandemic politics \u2014 and from her failure to stand out on anything new. In February 2021, the CPAC straw poll, while a narrow measure of GOP activists\u2019 passions, had Noem running second only to DeSantis in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary in which Trump doesn\u2019t run again, at 11 percent. Jim McLaughlin, the pollster who conducted the straw poll, called her \u201ca rock star\u201d at the time<\/a>. By CPAC\u2019s July meeting last year, Noem had tumbled to 3 percent<\/a>. In some national polls, she barely registers<\/a> at all.<\/p>\n Noem is doing everything a small-state governor can to reinsert herself into the national conversation. Last month, to bolster her credibility on the GOP\u2019s big culture-war issues, she released draft legislation to prohibit teaching critical race theory in South Dakota schools<\/a>, to codify her executive orders<\/a> related to transgender women and girls in sports and to guarantee students an opportunity to pray<\/a> at the start of every school day. To a standing ovation in her State of the State address on Tuesday, she pledged to bring forward legislation to ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, and she proposed eliminating fees for concealed carry gun permits in the state.<\/p>\n On the morning of her address, she appeared on Fox with Ben Carson<\/a>, the former Housing and Urban Development secretary, to promote a Trump-inspired pledge<\/a> to, among other promises, \u201crestore honest, patriotic education that cultivates in our children a profound love for our country.\u201d It was good for a TV hit, but it\u2019s hard to find a Republican who isn\u2019t talking about abortion or the Second Amendment or critical race theory, and there was some snickering in Pierre when Noem, who touts herself as the first candidate to sign the document, invited Carson to attend her State of the State address, introducing him as \u201ca friend of mine and a hero in his own right.\u201d<\/p>\n One longtime Republican donor to politicians in South Dakota, including Noem, said, \u201cShe\u2019ll do everything she can to make it to the national stage in 2024, or a Cabinet appointment. But without Covid, she seems to struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n Noem may still be able to overcome the declining salience of a pandemic. On the morning after the auction in Sioux Falls, as Noem\u2019s guests began to check out and catch flights out of town, Dan Genter, who was a co-chair of Trump\u2019s \u201cSportsmen for Trump<\/a>\u201d coalition in the 2020 election, was eating breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Genter, president and CEO of Los Angeles-based RNC Genter Capital Management, described Noem as a \u201cspecial\u201d politician with \u201cstrong self-awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs far as being in the right place at the right time, she\u2019s a female candidate who can round out a ticket,\u201d he said. \u201cShe pulls women, and she pulls family values, which the Republican Party is struggling with a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n In the short term, Genter said, Noem lacks the notoriety and fundraising network that some other potential candidates have already developed. And, he added, \u201cYou\u2019re not going to be able to ride Covid policy forever.\u201d<\/p>\n But the presidential election is not for another two years. And 2024 won\u2019t be Noem\u2019s last shot; she\u2019s a full generation younger than Trump and Biden.<\/p>\n When I asked Genter what might come next for Noem, he shrugged: <\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s got a quarter of a century of political life yet,\u201d he said. She\u2019s got plenty of runway.\u201d<\/p>\n