Boy, don’t worry about Kristi Noem sticking the taxpayers with her jet fuel bills. Her pre-primary campaign finance filing indicates that her trips to all those fancy Republican events around the country pay for themselves.
On April 25, Noem headlined a Hays County GOP dinner in Texas. According to the campaign finance report Noem filed yesterday, the Hays County Republican Party gave her gubernatorial campaign $15,000.
On February 28, Noem headlined New York State Republican Convention fundraising dinner on Long Island. The New York Republican State Committee gave Noem $25,000.
On April 30, Noem spoke to the gun-free Advance event of the Republican Party of Virginia at the Hilton Washington Dulles Airport Hotel in Herndon, VA.
The Republican Party of Virginia Inc gave Noem $40,000.
Three trips, three states, less than three months—$80,000.
Plus, Noem reports that the New York Republican State Committee donated another $20,000 to pay for travel. The Teton County Republican Party, whom Noem helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in Jackson Hole on February 18, donated another $6,368 for travel this year. So that’s over $106,000 to help Noem live her jet-set celebrity lifestyle. That’s more money than the $105,693.25 her primary challenger Steven Haugaard reports raising for his entire campaign so far (and that’s including the $35,000 that Haugaard has dumped into his campaign from his own pocket and about $4,500 more from Haugaard’s own Legislative campaign fund). That’s more than three quarters of what Democrat Jamie Smith has raised since announcing his bid for Governor in February. And it’s more money than Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Tracey Quint will ever see (alas!).
But Noem’s $106K+ from these four out-of-state Grand Old Parties is a mere three and a a half percent of the $3.07 million in cash and donated goods and services that came to her gubernatorial campaign this winter and spring. And she has 73 times that travel-booty waiting in the bank for the rest of her 2022 campaign.
Where does $$ come from in RGA Right Direction PAC ($500,000*) Washington DC, and Noem Victory Fund PAC ($333,000) Bryant SD??
*Subterfuge employed by accountant who doesn’t use commas for ease in understanding hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars, eh? Generally accepted accounting principles, my ass.