When you’re holding a slim and questionable lead in a political race, one of the last things you should do is alienate the press and powerful members of your own party. But here goes Kristi Noem again, dispatching her campaign spokesman to repeat her claim that Senate President Pro-Tempore Lee Schoenbeck, reporter Jazzmine Jackson, and others who say she resisted repealing South Dakota’s food tax during the 2022 Session are liars:
Noem tried pawning the failure of the food tax repeal off on Senator Schoenbeck the day she announced her profound election-season flip-flop on the issue. Senator Schoenbeck has patiently corrected the record, noting that Noem “adamantly opposed” the last food tax repeal proposal of the 2022 Session. Now Lee’s son Jake takes Team Noem to task:
Jake does make one error here—I won’t call it a lie, but perhaps just an incorrect contention—positing that Kristi Noem has any integrity that Ian’s lies could disserve. (Remember, we’re talking about repealing the sales tax on food, a good Democratic policy Noem resisted for four years in Pierre before promising to support it but which she now won’t convene a Special Session to enact.)
But Team Noem is sticking to its claim that Jake’s dad is a liar:
I’m not sure we can take the campaign spokesman’s word on this issue. We need Fury to name those “several other folks familiar with her thinking” (and let’s hope at least a few of them are not paid campaign staffers or Second Floor employees) so we can ask them if Noem really supported the food tax repeal that Rep. Jamie Smith, other Democrats, and some ambitious House Republicans supported before the Senate quashed it at what we thought was Governor Noem’s behest. And even if Team Noem can get people to speak in her defense on this issue, they’ll have to explain why Senator Schoenbeck is lying about the Governor’s winter position on the food tax.
Not one person has come out and said she has been supportive of this..that’s pretty telling. Just like the little videos she posts of people supporting her re-election bid…I’m sure if anyone comes out and says she has wanted to repeal this tax will be thoroughly “investigated” by those on social media and their lies and hypocrisy will be exposed too.
It’s just Ian cashing another pay check and trying to deflect criticism from his boss.Ian believes firmly in a Noem landslide victory and is just biding his time until election day and the big blow out victory party. Up to that time, anyone not wearing a funny hat and blowing a noise maker is a liar.
I think Jamie needs a new commercial. Instead of the guys talking about Kristi running away from the state, the new one should show a couple of ordinary folks visiting the grocery store while they talk about Kristi’s grandstanding on the grocery tax. And while we are making commercials, perhaps one talking about how Thune ‘thinks’ about his little grand daughter on his way to DC while denying rights to all little girls and women in the state. What has he ever done for women and children in this state?
Willy, what has Thune done for ANYBODY in this state except for himself. Not that Thune is a SoDakian except for the purpose of getting re-elected to stand beside and slightly behind Mitch McConnell in photographs. Me? I’d eat barbed wire before appearing in a photo with Mitch.
If Kristi Noem had long wanted to eliminate the tax on groceries, we’d have known about it. We wouldn’t have to go searching for somebody she might have mentioned it to.
She sure didn’t have much difficulty getting the message out last week, did she?
The most telling proof of Thune’s fecklessness in office was on display today when they played the video of Congressional leaders attempting to deal with the insurrection. As usual, Sen. Thune was quietly standing in the background, simply swaying from right to left as if it was just another day at the office—very much like he stands like a expressionless statue behind Mitch during a press conference.
At this point, isn’t Governor Noem advertising/magnifying failure? The more she gets into this fight, the more she is shouting her inability to get things done. AND with no plan to make things go differently next time. (I believe there will still be a senate next session.) Do voters really need a candidate whose platform is to be the personification of an eternal, malfunctioning wishing well?
The libbie press, like this young Ms. Jackson here, are just partisan hacks. But Mr. Schoenbeck has a plan, it is deep, and when folded up is thicker than your wallet.
grudznick, how does a Governor saying that she was unable to get a bill passed through a senate controlled by her own party make the argument that she is a leader that deserves another term in office? Add to that she is not willing to take that fight on right now in a special session. I’m having great trouble tracing the “common sense” of her position.
Let’s take a step back —— Kristi had 4 years to get the food tax repealed, and she not only didn’t, all we heard is her opposition to the idea. Nuff said!
If Governor Noem had been rebuked by the SD legislature everyone in the state would have known it. She’d have had Ian Fury loudly proclaim her anger and intentions more times than one can imagine. But she didn’t. He didn’t and her silence was a “tell” that it didn’t happen.
When our governor swears that she is made of truth, we do believe her, though we know she lies….yap, yap, yap. Apologies, Bill.
We can apparently overlook all sins in the attractive and charismatic in SD.