This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
Our Dakota Political Junkies today are Seth Tupper and Kevin Woster. We'll explore national politics and a few national headlines that feature local South Dakota names.
We hear analysis on why Gov. Kristi Noem made Donald Trump's vice-presidential shortlist. And we discuss lessons learned from the political rise and fall of Mike Pence, Trump's former vice president.
Seth Tupperis the editor-in-chief of South Dakota Searchlight. Kevin Woster is a long-time South Dakota journalist.
________________________
Lori Walsh:
All right. We are going to head to our Black Hills Surgical Hospital Studio now in Rapid City, where we have seated on the western side of the state. Some folks for today's Dakota Political Junkies conversation, Seth Tupper is with us, he is editor-in-chief of South Dakota Searchlight.
And he is joined by a familiar voice to the program, another familiar voice, Kevin Woster, our friend, longtime South Dakota journalist. Okay, Seth Tupper is our friend too. I'm just excited to hear from Kevin today. So they are the Junkies today. And Seth, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Seth Tupper:
You're welcome. And I don't know if I qualify for longtime, 20 years, but that pales in comparison to what Kevin has on me over there, anyway.
Lori Walsh:
Kevin, hey, welcome back.
Kevin Woster:
Hey. 20 years seems like yesterday to me.
Lori Walsh:
There's a lot of experience around the table here. So I want to start with you, Seth, because Helene Duhamel just said something about water and getting it to the Black Hills region. And we didn't plan to talk about this, but it seems like you probably have some thoughts on that right away. You want to start there?
Seth Tupper:
Well, I wish I could respond intelligently to what Helene said, but Kevin was talking my ear off over here, so I didn't [inaudible 00:01:11].
Kevin Woster:
That's what I do.
Seth Tupper:
But yeah. No, I know that she's been a real champion for that. And she was bitterly disappointed last year. I think she had a bill that came down to the very last day of the session that would've brought money out here.
So she's worked really hard at that to bring attention to that issue. And there are a lot of folks out here in Rapid City who do really believe that we need a pipeline from the Missouri River, and we need to get working on that to address water needs over 10, 25, 50 years. And so it's a really important issue out here.
We don't have the Missouri River. We don't have all the lakes that they have in Eastern South Dakota. Our water supply is a lot more limited.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Seth wrote a great piece about water rights and who can claim them, find that at southdakotasearchlight.com. I'll help you out there, Seth. The lesson is: never talk during the show.
All right, let's talk about national politics. Because we have a candidate, Former President Donald Trump, who is the front-runner, and all but has cinched the nomination really at this point to be the Republican's choice for the presidential race in the fall, put out his shortlist of vice presidential candidates. Governor Kristi Noem, one of five people that he mentioned, would be a great candidate.
She has said she had a good long talk, those are her words, good long talk with Former President Trump. And yet Dakota Scout did an interview, I was watching it online this morning. She sounded a little bit... They asked her how she felt about things and she said, "I don't know how to feel. I want him to win." There are a lot of people talking about whether or not she will be a vice presidential pick and what happens between now and November if she is.
So, Kevin, why don't you start us out with some of the political headlines that are really swirling around our governor right now and what this might mean for the state of South Dakota? What do you think?
Kevin Woster:
Well, I was talking beforehand that one of the things I've finally learned with Kristi Noem is not to sell her short. She's won everything she's run for, and there's been some tough races. And early on, I dismissed this idea. But as time grew and time went on and her profile grew, and her connection with Trump grew, and her total commitment to Donald Trump grew, which you have to be totally committed to Donald Trump and totally loyal, which she has been, and his reactions and responses to her, I'm not surprised she's on the shortlist.
I was surprised. I listened to that Dakota Scout... the video, the audio, and I was surprised when she said she wasn't sure how to feel about it because I would've thought she'd have been a little bit more prepared with that part when somebody asked that question. Otherwise, she didn't really say much that surprised me. Did he meet with her and say, "Listen, I've got another choice, but I wanted to have a conversation with you about it," or did he say, "Yeah, you're still in it. We're getting close. Hang in there"? I don't know. She's going to be a news-maker on this. She's been a news-maker on so many other things.
Lori Walsh:
Seth, we heard Senator John Thune give his endorsement to Donald Trump, the former president, to be the next president. We also learned just this morning that Mitch McConnell is not going to be in the picture in the future, that he is not running for reelection. I believe that's the news that was passed down to me this morning. So a lot is changing right now. Were you surprised at either of those pieces moving around the chess board like they have?
Seth Tupper:
Well, the timing of Thune's endorsement of Trump now looks more interesting, obviously, now that we know it came just a week or so before Mitch McConnell announced that he's going to step down as the leader of the Republicans in the Senate. So, certainly, it looks like or there could be a possibility that if you're going to get the top job to lead the Republicans in the Senate, if Trump wins, you're going to have to be a Trump guy.
And so if Thune wants the top job, he's going to have to get in line. Because if Trump wins, you're going to need his endorsement to become the leader of the Senate among the Republicans. So I don't know if one thing had anything to do with the other, but obviously, about a week ago, Thune said, "I endorse Trump." And then the next week, McConnell. And he and Thune work very closely.
Thune is the number-two Republican in the Senate behind McConnell. They're in leadership together and they work very closely. About a week later, McConnell says, "I'm going to step down." So you wonder if those two are connected.
Yeah. It's been a rollercoaster for Thune with Trump. Obviously, if we recall, he was the first senator, I believe, to say that Trump should drop out of the race back in 2016 after the Access Hollywood tapes came out. I don't know how long ago was it when Trump had his rally in Rapid City here, they put a picture of John Thune on the screen in the arena, and everybody booed in the Republican Party here in South Dakota. So it's definitely been a bumpy ride, but it looks like he's maybe realized that for the future, if Trump's going to win, he's going to have to be on Team Trump.
Lori Walsh:
All right. I might've set that up a little confusing. Mitch McConnell is not leaving the Senate, to be clear, just not going to be in that leadership position going forward in the fall. I want to ask you both for your thoughts on Governor Kristi Noem dealing with the media because I think, Seth, you mentioned, or no, Kevin, you mentioned there was a little bit of surprise when they asked her...
Austin Goss and Joe Sneve were doing that interview when they said, "Well, how do you feel about this?" She didn't seem to have an answer. Either she didn't have it prepared or she specifically had prepared to say, "I don't know how to feel about it, but I want to see him win." So that was either a planned response or a spontaneous response.
And I wanted to ask you a little bit about how she has controlled the kinds of interviews that she sits for, the people that she's willing to talk with. We know she has a big presence on Fox News. As she moves forward trying to get votes for the former president, does she need to change that, double-down on it, get better? Is she already a top-notch interviewer? What are some of your thoughts about how she handles the media, especially the national media? Kevin, you start with that, please.
Kevin Woster:
Well, I think we need to learn how she handles the national media because mostly, she only handles one portion of it, and that's the Fox News, Breitbart-type, Newsmax-type media. And she's had some exchanges with people, or a couple recently, from what I would call the more mainstream media, national media, but she hasn't really been challenged very much by them, and they can be pretty tough. So I don't know exactly how much of that she'll allow.
Senator Mike Rounds basically does interviews with anybody who wants to talk to him, and that's just the way he has always been. That's the way he was as a governor pretty much. And she hasn't been that way with state media, with in-state media. And of course, it leads all of us to wonder, other governors seem to need us more than she needs us or thinks she needs us.
And part of that is the new social media world that she's in that you can go directly to people. But part of it, I would suspect, is that she was looking beyond us a lot of time. To the issue we're talking about now with a possible VP position or a cabinet position. Secretary of Agriculture has been mentioned with her. I think she should be more open and accessible to all media in South Dakota. I suspect she may not be.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Seth, what do you want to add to this?
Seth Tupper:
Well, if she does get on the Trump ticket, I don't think it'll matter. Trump dominates the media and gets himself in the headlines every day, 20 times a day. I don't think, at this point, anybody's going to vote for Trump or not vote for Trump based on who his running mate is or isn't.
I mean, everybody's opinions about Trump are set at this point. That may have mattered the first time he ran when the thought was he needed somebody like Mike Pence on the ticket to calm the fears of moderate Republicans about what he would be like when he was president. But we know Trump now. We know what he is. You either like him or you don't. So I don't know that anything will matter about his running mate. She just would have to stand there and look capable of taking over if something happened to him and toe the line with what he wants her to do, and that's about it.
Lori Walsh:
She has to think about her political future, though.
Seth Tupper:
True.
Lori Walsh:
I mean, Mike Pence is a great example of that.
Kevin Woster:
There is danger in an association with Trump because you have to be so loyal to him. And Mike Pence reached a point where he just said, "I can't do this for you." And look what happened to him. Now, would Governor Noem, if she had been in Mike Pence's position, would she have certified? Would she have done her role in that certification process for that election? I'm not sure she would have.
I don't know what to think anymore. At one point, I would've said, "Sure, she would've. Our three members of Congress did. That's who they are. That's the kind of people we've always elected." I'm not sure what Governor Noem would've done if she'd been in Mike Pence's position.
Lori Walsh:
Seth, you read Not My First Rodeo, Governor Kristi Noem's first book. She has another book coming out. And you've written extensively about how she talks and puts together her policies, including this notion of freedom as being... freedom works here, and the way we... She capitalizes the word "freedom."
Are there any thoughts that you have before... I want to make sure we talk a little bit about lithium before we move on and bring things back to this, the State House. But any final thoughts that you have, Seth, about just the way she communicates and whether that is going to be as effective on a national stage as she wants it to be? Or is it more effective on the national stage than it really has been locally? What do you think?
Seth Tupper:
Well, I think you do make a point there. She has gotten really skilled at talking to the conservative media bubble, basically. And this whole thing, I wrote a commentary about how she capitalizes the F in "freedom" every time she writes it, and that's true, she's still doing that to this day.
Every time she posts on social media or issues a weekly column for newspapers or whatever, every F is capitalized every time she writes "freedom." And that's a gimmicky thing that plays well to her base and I think would continue to serve her well as Trump's running mate.
But I think you make a good point that if she's going to go beyond that, if she becomes vice president and ultimately wants to run for president, she's going to have to break out of that box and appeal to a broader audience of people. And that'll be the true test is can she do that after so many years of really learning and focusing on how to communicate just to a subset of the electorate.
Lori Walsh:
All right. Let's wrap up with lithium tax and some of the conversations that we saw in Pierre about lithium and whether or not it should be taxed at all. Seth, catch us up on this story and help us understand the basics if you would.
Seth Tupper:
Yeah. Well, there's been an effort the last two years in the legislature to impose a tax on lithium mining because there's a lot of exploration going on in the Black Hills. Lithium is used in lithium-ion batteries to power electric vehicles and devices and things. And it's failed both times. It came really close to passing this year and failed.
And I wanted to write about it because I knew that we had been pretty late to tax gold in South Dakota. Even though gold was discovered in the 1870s and mined continuously up until today, we didn't tax gold mining in South Dakota until 1935, and that was because legislators just refused to do it. And there was a lot of pressure from very powerful Homestake Mine lobbying against that.
And the only reason we ended up doing it is because it was the depression and we were desperate for revenue and there were some Democrats in power at the time. There was a Democratic governor. And they ended up imposing that tax. And my point in the commentary was, do we really want to wait that long again, 50 years or whatever into the advancement of an industry?
By the time we taxed gold in South Dakota, hundreds of millions of dollars of gold had already been taken out of the ground. And we didn't derive any tax benefit out of the depletion of that resource for the state as a whole. It just brings up the point that you want to do these things early on before it gets away from you.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Kevin Woster, any thoughts on that, on some of the legislation that's important to the Black Hills in particular?
Kevin Woster:
Well, these are precious resources, and the process of extracting them can be a messy one for the environment. We don't want to be late to the party when it comes to creating attacks, and we don't want to be late, especially when it comes to setting up a framework to make sure we have the protection of the environment and the reclamation process and a way to pay for them.
So I think Seth is... the reporting he's done has been extraordinarily important, and I hope people pay attention to it, especially people in Pierre.
Lori Walsh:
All right. You can find Seth Tupper's... the work of a longtime journalist on the website southdakotasearchlight.com. Kevin Woster, you can find his previous and future work for SDPB on our website sdpb.org/Woster. Gentlemen, friends, I thank you. We'll see you next time.
