This interview originally aired on In the Moment on SDPB Radio.
The clock is ticking. There are only a few more days to get bills to the governor's desk. The deadline is Monday, March 6.
David Wiltse and Lisa Hager are both associate professors of political science at South Dakota State University. They review the 2023 session and look ahead at what's next for some high-profile bills and issues that likely won't reach the lawbooks.
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Lori Walsh:
You are listening to In the Moment on South Dakota Public Broadcasting. I'm your host, Lori Walsh. Well the legislative session is barreling toward its inevitable conclusion, and that means appropriations and a few more days to get bills to the governor's desk. That deadline is Monday, March 6th. So as we enter the final days of this session, let's bring our Dakota political junkies back into the conversation. This is a rotating panel of political scientists and journalists and former lawmakers that we bring on once a week on Wednesdays. You can watch us today at sd.net and tune in to the SDPB Facebook page if you want to see that conversation as well. David Wiltse and Lisa Hager are with me in a Zoom room now. They are both associate professors of political science at South Dakota State University. Dr. Hager, welcome. Thank you for being here.
Lisa Hager:
Thanks for having me.
Lori Walsh:
Dr. Wiltse, welcome as well.
David Wiltse:
Good to be here.
Lori Walsh:
We're going to broaden our lens a little bit and bring in something of a conversation about national politics, because it's CPAC week. The list of speakers for CPAC is not always completely posted online. We don't see that governor Noem is going to speak there yet, or at least I haven't seen at the time that we're talking right now. There are some notable people coming, some notable people who are not coming, and she's having this whole legislative session and her negotiations with lawmakers about the food tax in the context of this national conversation. So Lisa Hager, you and I have talked so often about governor Noem and women's paths to power. How do these two things intersect right now and what's a good move for her as far as CPAC right now?
Lisa Hager:
As of right now, I think it is worthwhile for her to be focusing on the politics that are happening back in South Dakota rather than trying to focus on what's happening nationally, just because she does tend to be criticized when she's outside of the state focusing on some of those things rather than what's going on here. As far as what she's doing with respect to the sales tax on groceries, I think she's doing a very good job in the way in which she's couching that. If anyone's watching the Twitter video that she released, she's really talking about the importance of tax cuts and the importance of putting more money in the pocket of citizens and letting them make the decisions about how their money is spent.
Essentially telling the legislature you should give the people what they want. When we think in terms of a woman trying to get her path to power in terms of the national executive position, I think that's very good. Republicans tend to look to individuals, females or males, who are really good at toeing the party line on these kinds of things, rather than maybe focusing on other sorts of things such as, I could also be the first female president, for instance.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Dr. Wiltse, what do you want to add to that? And then specifically I'm thinking about this idea of a primary, a Republican primary. This is an interesting timing for her. It's an opportunity. It's also a challenge.
David Wiltse:
Well, we're not exactly sure what she's angling for just yet. It's just speculation. Is she really going to throw her hat into the ring for a nomination or does she have a goal of getting some kind of cabinet appointment or a vice presidential pick? So until we really get a sense of what her goal is, it's hard to say what her ambition is in terms of CPAC itself and some of these other events that are just critical for this early part of the selection process for a nominee. Because we're in that phase where the party is trying to figure out a good advocate, somebody who's electable, somebody who can keep all the different pieces of the Republican coalition together.
And with CPAC in particular, this is a tough time for them because of the issues with their leadership right now and some of the accusations levied against him. Some people are staying away because of that political taint. So we don't know if she's staying away because of that, if she's staying away because she's not really a presidential candidate. It's kind of up in the air. But I think Lisa is right that the best thing she can do for her prospects either way is take care of things at home at this particular moment. I mean, this is go time for our legislature. The last thing she needs to do is be going somewhere else to try to gin up support for some kind of national position.
Lori Walsh:
And Dave, I think you just heard leader Mortenson talk about talking with her office every day. He's sounded confident to me that they would have the votes for a veto, although he wasn't looking forward to counting them at this point. She was pretty clear that she wants something on her desk that's worthy of her pen. Is this just working toward a compromise or is this working toward a standoff?
David Wiltse:
Well, I don't think there's going to be a standoff in the end. I hope there's not going to be a standoff in the end. Because there's not a huge difference between these people in terms of policy. There's not a lot of daylight between the factions here. And in the end, I think for the governor herself, this is important to save faced with the public here in South Dakota. This is a promise she made. This is important for any broader ambition she might have. And in the end, this probably is better policy in terms of going for that food discount as opposed to a broader sales tax decrease. I think that's just better politics in many ways.
So she is going to push this about as far as she can, and in the end who knows who's going to come out on top. But the governor does have a lot of coercive tools that she can pull out in these final days. I would not count her out of this getting her way on this in the end, especially because in general this is a very popular policy and it will have a very real effect for people who really need it.
Lori Walsh:
I want to pivot a little bit and talk about abortion access and some of the work that either was done or wasn't done, depending on your perspective with defining the life of a mother for our abortion legislation which is currently in place after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US Supreme Court last year. Morning Edition did a great piece this morning coming out of Texas with OBGYNs and medical providers saying they were confused. They were confused about whether they could tell a patient they could go to another state for abortion care or whether they could be reported for that. What exactly defines the life of a mother?
And lawmakers did not put the finality on making that definition yet. Voters will have their say, and Lisa, going back to giving the people what they want, we don't really know what South Dakota voters want beyond some polling data, which we can also talk about. But what's at stake here, Lisa, with this conversation? Because if lawmakers are trying to make this access to abortion really hard, did they miss the train to do that because voters could completely go the opposite direction? Help us unpack all that.
Lisa Hager:
Yeah, I think that it's definitely problematic that they weren't able to make any headway on this particular issue because as we've talked before at length on the show there is a lack of clarity currently on what the health of the mother standard is, and without defining that, we continue to exist in this sort of situation where there's limbo, where medical providers don't actually know what is or isn't allowed. And then that's just fueled by a lot of these stories that you hear at times, someone was forced to carry their fetus that died in utero to term. We hear some of these extraordinary types of circumstances, which leads to a conversation of would that be required to happen here? What does that mean in light of the law that South Dakota has? And we still don't have any real clarity on that.
And with the fact that this becoming a ballot issue, I think that there is some risk of the legislature could have potentially lost some control of that. I don't necessarily think, based on some of the polling data I've seen, that we're all of a sudden going to have a constitutional right to an abortion. Dave can chime in a little bit... A state constitutional right to abortion. I think so federally all the time. Anyway, I don't necessarily see that happening here in South Dakota. But again, when you do have the opportunity for voters to have a say on that, you have that uncertainty of possibly losing some control there.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Dave, what do you want to add about that polling data and what do we currently know about how South Dakotans think about exceptions for the life of the mother and things that you've seen?
David Wiltse:
We know definitively that South Dakotans support exceptions to the health of the mother. I mean, in our polling of the SDFC poll, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 84% or some such number. So there is real consensus on tha.t as to a consensus on a constitutional amendment, that's much more closely divided. People are marginally pro-choice in this state, and they're well behind the national electorate when it comes to this question. A good chunk, a fairly good majority of Americans are pro Roe status as opposed to what we have now after Dobbs. But South Dakotans are very closely divided on that, and I'd be surprised if that amendment would be successful.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. All right. Lots of talk of... Go ahead.
David Wiltse:
But they're right, we need clarity on this health of a mother, and it is good politics because this is something that needs to be clarified. Every one of these stories that we hear, this is really tragic stuff, and clarity is necessary from the legislature on this.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Let's talk about another piece of legislation, one of the earliest ones to come out, which was Senate Bill 1, and we'll start with you, professor Wiltse, this is about medical cannabis and really who gets to decide what conditions are on the list that would qualify somebody to have access to that cannabis card. We heard a lot about PTSD this year, for example. Where do you want to begin with this?
David Wiltse:
Well, as I understand it, and I'm just following this for the first time, because this is the first time the legislature has really engaged this question, for obvious reasons. But where we stood after the referendum was most of these decisions were made by the Department of Public Health, and they have wanted to pass this off to the legislature. And that's what SB 1 is all about, giving the legislature the power to determine these exemptions. That would put us in a somewhat different position than a lot of other states that have medicinal marijuana, but not recreational marijuana. Just looking over the border, in Minnesota, for example, the power sits both with the legislature. They can add things by statute. But their commissioner of health can also add things as the office sees fit.
And that makes a good deal of sense to have people who are in public health, medical experts can adjust these things between legislative sessions. But for a variety of reasons here in South Dakota, they just want to pass that off to the legislature, and that's what SB 1 is all about, and whether that passes, anybody's guess. But again, the state kind of dragged its feet in implementing a system of regulation or medicinal marijuana, despite the fact that it was incredibly popular and passed with a very wide margin two years ago.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, interesting. Professor Hager, any final thoughts about this legislative session about either what Professor Wiltse was talking about there in medical cannabis, or just broadly speaking, you've noticed this session that is interesting, especially with your federal perspective as you look at things that are happening in other states?
Lisa Hager:
Yeah, no, for sure. I think when we're having this conversation about the medical cannabis, one of the things that I personally found was interesting when I was looking at the bill was that they were at times trying to call out specific sorts of conditions or ailments that folks would have, but also at other times trying to be pretty general. So I think even though it is getting given to the legislature, they're struggling with trying to sort through all of these things. And I think the most interesting thing from my standpoint was that there was this focus on physical conditions, nothing relating to mental health, and I think that that's something that the legislature is also going to have to deal with in the future because I would suspect that most voters and constituents would essentially bring it to their attention.
Lori Walsh:
Fascinating stuff. Lisa Hager, David Wiltse, both associate professors of political science at South Dakota State University, and on our rotating panel of Dakota political junkies. Thank you so much for being here with us today and helping us sort all this out as the stuff swirls in the background. I think you've brought a lot of clarity to what matters today. So Dr. Wiltse, thank you.
David Wiltse:
Thanks.
Lori Walsh:
Dr. Hager. Thank you as well.
Lisa Hager:
Thanks, Lori.
