So, let me get this straight: Some people are moving to South Dakota because of masks?
Or, more accurately, because of no masks? As in no mask mandate?
Seriously? You change your life and uproot your, uh, roots so that in certain situations you don’t have to wear a face-covering designed to slow the spread of a potentially fatal virus?
That seems, well, ridiculous. And maybe it’s not true. Or entirely true. Maybe people who say they moved here for freedom from masks actually had lots of other reasons to move.
Or maybe, to them, masks are just a two-ply symbol of freedom overall. You know, the slippery slope thing. Take away my machine gun today and my .410 single shot will be gone tomorrow.
Force me to wear a mask today, force me to chop wood and break rocks in the gulag tomorrow.
We don’t actually send people to chop wood and break rocks in gulags, of course. We don’t actually have gulags. So, we can’t send you there to chop wood and break rocks. And it’s very unlikely that anyone will do prison time for not wearing a mask.
That’s true across the USA, but especially here in South Dakota, where our governor is impervious to pro-mask arguments. Not only won’t she mandate them. She won’t model them in her own life. Not even a little bit.
Who is that unmasked woman, anyway?
I’ve seen her once in a mask, I think. It was on TV. She was in the Dakota Dome for an event where masks were required. But not to worry, anti-maskers, she was later shown in the Dome without a mask.
Whew. What a relief that must have been to her anti-mask fans. Especially those who moved here because of masks. Or no masks, as it were.
Some apparently have moved here because of Noem herself. They consider her to be a freedom fighter, with presidential potential. Her close relationship with Donald Trump doesn’t hurt her appeal to them, either.
So, some people apparently have relocated to be free of mask rules-—obviously avoiding those East River towns that have imposed one degree of mask mandate or another — and enjoy living in a state with a like-minded governor.
To them, I might offer a caveat: You might be in for a surprise in a few years. We might not be exactly the state you think we are.
You see, Gov. Kristi Noem is in some key ways an outlier among South Dakota governors, at least those who I have known and covered going back to the 1970s and our last elected Democratic governor, Richard Kneip.
Mandates or not, former governors would have worn them
After Kneip came the Republican row: Bill Janklow, George Mickelson, Walter Dale Miller, Bill Janklow again, Mike Rounds and Dennis Daugaard.
None of them would have handled the mask thing the way Noem has.
Oh, I’m not saying they would have imposed mask mandates. Probably not. Although I don’t know that for sure. I’d say the action-oriented Janklow would have been the most likely to impose restrictions.
What I do know is that all of those governors would have offered reasonable leadership in promoting face coverings in the appropriate places at the appropriate times. Which is, generally, anytime you are close enough to others to exchange air for any extended period of time.
You would have seen all those governors regularly wearing masks, just as you see U.S. Sens. John Thune and Mike Rounds (one of those past governors himself) and Congressman Dusty Johnson regularly wearing masks now. You would have seen more consistent state messaging on the value of masks as part of an essential COVID-control package, along with social distancing and hand-and-surface sanitizing.
Beyond masks, you would not have seen any of those governors call a constitutionally based presidential election handled by Republican and Democratic officials across the United States “rigged.” And you wouldn’t have seen them toss around the “fake news” label for any journalism they didn’t happen to like.
Arguing with reporters while respecting the Fourth Estate
Oh, sure, each governor would defend himself with reporters and seek corrections when they thought them justified. And some, Bill Janklow in particular, could be cantankerous in challenging journalists and news outlets. But Janklow did it specifically, case by case, sometimes harshly, sometimes rightly, sometimes not.
And underlying all that gruffness was a clear understanding and general regard for the value of journalism, including the kind that makes politicians uncomfortable. I’ve had past governors apologize for being too harsh in their criticism of me and my stories. Imagine that.
And imagine this: Just a few years ago, one conservative Republican governor — Dennis Daugaard — kept a campaign promise by eliminating a $127 million structural deficit in our state budget. It was hard, painful work, with budget cuts that stung.
But he was also the governor who led an effort a few years later to increase the state sales tax to help lift teacher payout of the national basement. And he vetoed a bill on transgender bathrooms after meeting with and listening to transgender people.
Those are the kinds of governors I have known over the last 50 years in South Dakota. Kristi Noem, who seemed a reasonable conservative during her eight years in the U.S. House, is proving herself to be unlike her predecessors in the state Capitol in some essential ways. She also had more trouble getting elected than most of them did.
11,000 votes short of much-different leadership
Noem beat moderate Democrat Billie Sutton 51-48 percent, or by a margin of 11,458 votes out of more than 334,000 cast. It was the closest scare for a Republican gubernatorial nominee in South Dakota since 1986 when Democrats were still a viable political threat and George Mickelson beat Lars Herseth by 10,645 votes.
There were fewer votes cast in that election. So, the 52-48 percent Mickelson-Herseth margin was actually slightly wider than the Noem-Sutton percentage.
In her 2018 race, Noem needed the help of the more moderate GOP traditionalists to win. Without that help, it’s very likely Billie Sutton would be governor today.
A West River cowboy who lives and leads as a moderate, Sutton would have handled the state’s COVID response, mask modeling and recommendations, relationships with the news media and with Donald Trump much differently than Kristi Noem has.
What all that might say to “freedom-loving” newcomers to the state I have lived in and loved for my entire 69 years is this: You shouldn’t assume the current leadership style from the governor’s office is a certainty in the future.
Because it certainly departs from what we’ve known in the past.
