The SDGOP spin blog brags for its sponsor Kristi Noem that the part-time Governor and full-time campaigner has raised over $10 million since her last election and goes into her newly announced 2022 campaign with over $6.5 million on hand.
Wait: she hasn’t had to campaign for three years, yet she’s spent $3.5 million, over a third of her money? On what, artfully ratted denim and her Elvis costume? Trips to the Reagan Ranch and Mar-a-Lago to boost her national celebrity? Man, it sure costs a lot to make the Snow Queen look like something other than the least effective, least competent Governor in South Dakota history.
As Noem said in her weekly column, a little goes a long way. She could well be speaking of how her challengers in 2022, be they fellow Republicans in the primary or some hearty Democrat or independent in the general election, may not have to spend the kind of extravagant sums Noem has already accumulated and burned up to get campaign mileage out of everything Noem has done wrong as Governor:
- Poor relations with her own Republican Legislature
- Unwarranted hostility toward local press and local schools
- Frequent out-of-state campaigning distracting her from her own Legislative priorities
- Possible misuse of the state airplane for campaigning
- Wrecking relations with real estate appraisers and putting South Dakota’s real estate market at risk
- Chronic economic underperformance (and where’s that Next Big Thing to which Noem dedicated her first term?)
- Association with absolute scumbag Corey Lewandowski
- The 14th-worst coronavirus death rate in the nation and the lingering of a now entirely preventable pandemic due to the prioritization of profits over life and the Governor’s refusal to push vaccines
- Whitewashing of social studies curriculum standards
- Gross mismanagement of federal coronavirus relief dollars in a costly privatization contract
- Pimping out the National Guard
- A budget surplus sustained by wind power and federal help and not any gubernatorial fiscal vision or acumen.
- Losing multiple court cases to liberal litigants (and some conservatives!) who put the lie to her professed support for freedom
- Posting her only big court victory so far in overturning a popular marijuana initiative on specious legal grounds
- Nepotism, nepotism, nepotism….
Noem has already written the brief book against herself for any 2022 challengers, and most of those points aren’t nearly as complicated to explain or lay at the Governor’s feet as past corruption scandals like EB-5 and GEAR UP. For every dollar a smart candidate spends hanging Lewandowski, marijuana, and nepotism around Kristi’s neck, Team Noem will have to spend ten dollars playing defense and distraction just to hold her thin 3.4-percentage-point margin from 2018.
To win that margin in 2018, Kristi Noem had to spend $6.67 million, against $2.51 million spent by GOP primary challenger Marty Jackley and $3.71 million spent by Democratic candidate Billie Sutton. Thanks to Noem’s record of corruption, incompetence, and just plain lack of class, a 2022 challenger can spend half as much money as Sutton or Jackley and ten times the bang for the buck. Noem’s going to need that 6.5-million-dollar war chest just to fight the bad press from all of her errors listed above… and she still has a year to post even more screw-ups.
I wonder why candidates always chirp about how much money they raise. I look at campaign donations as bribes, because mostly that’s what they are. If they come from individuals and in small amounts, I guess donations are all right. But Noem’s globe trotting to whore herself out to Texans and Californians is disgusting. It’s fine if she gathers dollars from South Dakota’s elite, I suppose. I mean why would anyone else give her money.
My own history of trying to buy candidates is kind of pathetic. I donated to Tim Johnson early in his first Congressional campaign. I couldn’t afford much, but at a small fundraiser at Ken Stofferahn’s house in that primary, I dropped in a few bucks. I could never afford to give much over $25 bucks to any candidate, but I would gladly carry around their literature. I did that for a lot of candidates, starting when I was in high school. I donated some money to Tom Daschle’s campaign once. I know I gave a few dollars to Ken Stofferahn over the years, starting when he was a Republican. I remember being on a Sierra Club committee that helped a few Democratic and Republican legislative candidates out with endorsements and $25. I didn’t like the idea that my money, small as it was, might get them to talk to me.
When I ran for school board I self-funded my campaign. I couldn’t ask anyone for money. I would have felt bad taking it. Mostly, I would donate to environmental causes, not candidates.
What’s the ROI on $6.5M spent to be leader of such a small state?
I’m quite tickled at the possibility that the SD voters who united in favor of cannabis reform, may also be the same folks uniting again to send our Fascist Barbie packing next year. No Show has certainly accomplished pissing people off all across the political spectrum.
Porter, I would say quite high when dealing with the industries that remain unregulated in SD. Banks and trusts must feel pretty good about their campaign investments keeping them unencumbered from rules. Meatpacking plants know that they will be protected from OCEA and keep their advantages over the producers who supply them. Culture warriors always have a faithful state to jump into any lawsuit against any blue President.
Well…it appears Corey Lewandowski found a way to burn through 3.5 million dollars while fund raising…am I missing something?? All that travel and rubber chicken for a net loss?? Who is the new Noem brain trust??
O – There’s no doubt there is power in trust fund management and a little power in slaughter but I’m talking about political power.
Two cipher senators and a single representative adds up to little above pure, unmasked insignificance.
The political power in SD lies with liberals who align themselves and work to promote the Democratic Party of the United States of America.
It’s a group thing, and a fine group at that; well worth beaming pride to be a part of, nationally.
Competing against SD hog-hole Republicans only gets you dirty and smelling like crotch.
Last sentence is THE BEST!!