This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
Gov. Kristi Noem strongly endorsed a Texas cosmetic dentist in an almost five minute video posted to her social media feed. The video raised eyebrows here in South Dakota as well as nationally.
We discuss the video with our Dakota Political Junkies. Jon Hunter is publisher emeritus of the Madison Daily Leader, and Mike Card, Ph.D., is a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of South Dakota.
Plus, we learn their takeaways from South Dakota's 2024 legislative session.
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The following transcript was auto-generated.
Lori Walsh:
Before the break, we looked back at the 2024 legislative session with some of the members of the SDPB news crew. Now we'll take another look at that view with our Dakota Political Junkies.
Jon Hunter is publisher emeritus of the Madison Daily Leader. He was inducted into the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2022.
Mike Card is a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of South Dakota and they're both seated around the table.
Dr. Card, welcome back. Thanks for being here.
Mike Card:
Well, I'm pleased to be here, thank you.
Lori Walsh:
Jon Hunter, nice to see you both.
Jon Hunter:
I appreciate it.
Lori Walsh:
Before we get into the session, we do probably need to address the headline that is really in just about every news organization around the country this morning, it seemed like more and more people were piling on, and that is Gov. Kristi Noem put on her X account a four minute and 50 second video where she's talking about her dentist in Texas who fixed her smile.
It goes on for quite some time. I do want to play a clip for anybody who hasn't heard it. She does introduce herself as the governor and here she is talking about her job and why she had this work done.
Gov. Kristi Noem:
Well for me, I realized that the job that I'm in, I spent my whole life farming and ranching, riding horses, chasing cows and then got into government and politics, where everything is speaking and interviews and giving speeches. I want, when people look at me, to hear the words that I say and not be distracted by something that I'm wearing or how I look or even my appearance.
I want them to focus on my thoughts and ideas and what we can do to really make this country better. So for me, being able to have a confident smile and have my teeth be something that's not a distraction but actually is appealing to people, will be helpful because I think that it'll make sure that we're focused on really the right points that I want to make and make sure that that confidence shines through.
Lori Walsh:
A little bit of Gov. Kristi Noem. The first conversation we had in our newsroom under the guidance of SDPB news director, Josh Chilson, was, "Is it real?" And Kate Middleton posts a photo and now we have to start asking that question, "Is this a real video?"
We've not heard anything from the governor's office saying this is some kind of fake, but there was something strange about it,
Jon Hunter, A lot of people are using the word bizarre or, "What exactly is this?" What were your first thoughts when you saw it beyond, "Is this really our governor saying these things?"
Jon Hunter:
My first word was befuddled. I didn't know what it was, but I think one of my first impressions was really Hollywood and politics and so forth, the idea of any publicity is good publicity. So if The Washington Post and The Seattle Times and MSNBC and Yahoo News and CBS News are all talking about you, maybe that's part of that. It doesn't feel like a political thing. It's really about dentistry and orthodontics and so forth. So then you think maybe is maybe a paid endorsement. Is that a part-time job that she can endorse products, maybe like an athlete or a celebrity, but especially if it's endorsing someone in Houston instead of in South Dakota, I'm still a little befuddled exactly why she would choose to do that.
Lori Walsh:
Someone called it medical tourism in the sense that she went to another state to get something that she could have had done in South Dakota. So that was another key theme was why is she promoting or talking about or endorsing a health care provider that's not in South Dakota. She's in scrubs as a dental hygienist in the South Dakota Freedom Works Here, saying, "We have open jobs."
Jon Hunter:
And asked why this one? She said, "Because they're the best."
Lori Walsh:
They're the best.
Mike Card, your original thoughts on this? I don't know what to call it. I'm going to call it a video. Is it an ad, an infomercial?
Mike Card:
Well, it is an infomercial. It's certainly professionally done. This is not someone with their camera phone taking it. There's makeup, there's lighting. This is a professionally done video, so this was intentional. Whether it's real or not, we don't know.
But this is a well done video and I think that the question is, "Can you do this?" And I searched through the statutes this morning looking and doesn't seem to be anything prohibiting it. I don't know that this particular procedure requires total anesthesia, but if it did, then there should have been a notice at least to the lieutenant governor, if not to the others in the line of succession. Because if you are under total anesthesia, you're not capable of acting as governor. Although our Constitution also says the only body that can give jurisdiction, that can take up the question of whether the governor is either out of state too long or is incapable of acting, is the South Dakota Supreme Court.
So I don't know where we go from there. And it's the thing, can you do this? Sure. Should you do this, I think is the question that was the first thing in my mind. There are those who think this is conduct on becoming a governor. There are those who say, "What's the big deal? Why is this in the news? Are these just the haters coming out again or are these the supporters supporting anything that the person that they support does no matter what question." So in some sense, it's a polarization issue.
Lori Walsh:
I think it's rare to hear a politician talk about their appearance as much as she does in this. And she says specifically, I want people to be paying attention to my words and not my smile, not my teeth, which were pretty great teeth before, but she said they weren't perfect.
And she tells the story of her uncle who was an orthodontist who didn't fix her teeth because they weren't bad enough to be fixed. And so she mentioned appreciating this dentist, taking her seriously and saying, "Yeah, I want them to be perfect. I want the right shape, the right color, the right bite." Mike, I can't think of another politician that has so openly said, "Hey, I don't like this part about my face and I'm going to fix it," during the time when she's largely being considered as a vice presidential candidate. She's bringing attention to the thing that she says she doesn't want attention to. Is that rare? Is it a strategy?
Mike Card:
It's probably not a good strategy to call attention to the thing that you think is inhibiting your appearance. And I think it led on other places on X photos of the before pictures and the after pictures, and you can see quite a transformation in the appearance of our governor.
Lori Walsh:
So the argument would be, you all are going to talk about this anyway.
Jon Hunter:
Well, I've known Gov. Noem a long time and I've never thought of her teeth as distracting. I've spoken to her many times in person, and so it just was fine. But I do think appearance is important to the governor. There's nothing wrong with that. She wants to look the best she can, I guess.
Mike Card:
I think we all do. That's the other side of this.
Jon Hunter:
What's wrong with that? But to make this a public deal, it certainly has garnered a lot of press. There might be people somewhere when her name gets mentioned for some national thing later on said, "Noem, that name sounds familiar. I don't remember where that was, but I remember that name," because of this. They may not think positively or negatively about what the message was.
Lori Walsh:
Interesting. So how long does it last? How long before people are really talking about the thing that she specifically said she doesn't want us to be talking about? This stays in the media for how long?
Mike Card:
24, 48 hours, until something else comes up.
Lori Walsh:
You're on to the next thing.
Jon Hunter:
Yeah, I think it's very brief.
Lori Walsh:
Good. Well, let's move on then too. Let's talk about the legislative session. We just had a conversation with SDPB reporters, but there are other things, and I think we should start with Jon Hunter and quantum computing in Madison. What happened this session with something that very few lawmakers really understand, similar to the SURF Underground Research Lab in Lead. It's not the first time that lawmakers have to vote on something that they maybe can't explain, but it can be important to the future. How do you explain what happened this legislative session with quantum computing?
Jon Hunter:
Well, the first I think any of us heard about it was during Gov. Noem's budget address when she proposed this $6 million to form a center for quantum computing. Now, remember this specifically said, "No, we're not going to spend money on a computer. You're not going to buy a computer, although you can rent time on someone else's."
And two, "It's not going to be a physical facility. We're not going to build a building anywhere." This is really a program, a collaboration among four universities in South Dakota, Dakota State, SDSU, USD, and School of Mines and Engineering, and there's lots of different parts to it. Certainly Dakota State has its niche in there, but Dakota State is not a hardware university and quantum is a hardware circumstance. We do happen to have a president who has expertise in that area and that's valuable and there are people at the university who have studied quantum and so forth.
Of course, to laypeople this is really fast computing, and so it changes everything. It's not just like Intel going from one chip to the next one in Moore's Law, but this is really taking out, and there are certainly very positive things about it. Think of if you have a self-driving car that it could make its calculations and reactions much more quickly, much more safely. I think the negative thing is, the one that really pops up to me, is that you can crank all these calculations, it can break most encryption codes, because you can calculate, well, what are the 10 million possibilities? It'll do it in one second. And so there are some concerns about security and that's again, a little bit more of Dakota State's niche.
But it's interesting, these three big ones at DSU, certainly cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and quantum now. So I think Dakota State and South Dakota is at least dipping their toe in the water in some really, really important areas. And I think who knows what can come with it. Now, they didn't get the full budget amount. They got half of it. But that's not to say next legislative session, you do something, you add or subtract or whatever you do.
Lori Walsh:
How do you think you sell that to lawmakers when they can't necessarily understand it? And I mean, by all of us. I don't necessarily understand it either. I'm not picking on lawmakers for not understanding something. It is abstract in a lot of ways.
Jon Hunter:
It is, but I do think a lot of South Dakota's successes were being on the front edge of something, whatever it was. Now also, think of quantum's impact on agriculture. Remember, with all this precision farming and all this kind of stuff, that could be a big deal. Financial services, a big deal in Sioux Falls and other parts of South Dakota. Cybersecurity, national security, Ellsworth with their things.
Lori Walsh:
Health care.
Jon Hunter:
Health care, they'd be the biggest-
Lori Walsh:
When Dr. Griffiths comes and talks about this stuff, one of the things I love about her is that she has a good handle on the ethics and she's a leader in talking about the ethics, but she also is a great visionary on, like, "We're going to cure cancer." The things that I think people want to hear about the future of computing, driverless cars. Okay, fine. What we really want is a cure for diseases.
Jon Hunter:
I think you bring up the most important one, Lori, and that is healthcare. So imagine all the studies you can do or whatever that kind of thing is. So I think it's a modestly easy sell for two legislators and you can just point out the things we just pointed out and said, we should be at the front of this. Now there might be budget-tight years where it might get squeezed, 'cause there's a lot of other great things going on in South Dakota too, but I think they can sell that pretty easily.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Mike, any other things that you think we should surface about this session?
Mike Card:
Well, I think part of it is how quickly they got started and getting the budget pretty much finalized before the very last day and last minute. And again, that's because we have to wait as long as we can because the legislature is going out 16, 17, 18 months in time, and so the last possible revenue estimate they can get while the session is in session. That's why everything is at the end, the big money, anything involving any significant amount of money is going to be at the end. And so there's a rush, but a lot of that has been heard by the joint Appropriations Committee and it's certainly been talked about in the caucuses, but again, it just looks like all the money things come at the end and are we giving them enough consideration? And I think that we give as much as we can. Do I know what's going to happen in 18 months? No.
Lori Walsh:
We've all lived through a time when all the things we thought were going to happen were upended. So I think, perhaps-
Mike Card:
All projections are wrong. Just, are they wrong a little bit? Are they wrong a lot? Are they wrong-
Jon Hunter:
In which direction?
Mike Card:
In which direction? And are they wrong in matters that are important or not? I think that the reporters touched on a number of issues that we have and a number of things that are still yet to be determined. Certainly the ballot issues and the concerns about the ballot issues are just head-scratching for me. Requiring or allowing someone to withdraw their signature when you've had the chance to look at it and you didn't. We give real estate transactions three days to reverse yourself. Should we give that to signing a petition where you had the chance to find out what it was?
Lori Walsh:
I do not think that is the last of that story for how that one gets implemented. So we do have to leave it here. We have a lot to smile about in South Dakota. Jon Hunter, Mike Card. Thanks so much.
Jon Hunter:
Thanks Lori.
Mike Card:
Thanks Lori.
