Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) implored former President Donald Trump to consider the appeal of a woman vice president, a crafty attempt at boosting her profile after multiple scandals hurt her stock as a running mate.
“All the polls tell him in swing states that a woman on the ticket helps him win; the polls just say that,” Noem told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.
“One in four Republican women haven’t made up their minds because they want to have a woman talking to them about the issues they care about, and women aren’t monolithic,” Noem continued. “They don’t care about just one issue.”
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Recent reports suggest Noem has not made Trump’s narrowed-down list of possible running mates, which includes Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and J.D. Vance (R-OH); Reps. Byron Donalds (R-FL) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY); Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND); and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.
Political strategists had long claimed that Noem’s gaffes this year would likely nix her from Trump’s list of running mates due to unpleasant media attention.
Noem faced national outcry in April after her most recent book revealed she killed her family’s 14-month-old puppy Cricket, whom she “hated.”
In her book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, Noem explained that after Cricket attacked a local family’s chickens during a pheasant hunting trip, Noem led the dog to a gravel pit and shot it.
The backlash against Noem was swift, bipartisan, and reminiscent of past presidential cruelty toward animals.
Before the puppy-killing incident, Noem faced significant criticism for peddling business products on social media. She declined to answer questions about an unusual infomercial-style video she posted on X in March after receiving cosmetic dentistry work from a Texas business.
It’s unclear whether Noem received financial compensation for the posting.
Days after the dentist incident, Noem promoted Fit My Feet, which has several locations in South Dakota, for building insoles for her running and cowboy shoes. The governor was again criticized for the promotion.
But with Trump’s recent legal problems involving women, there is some argument that a female joining his ticket would help win back suburban women who have drifted away from the GOP.
In January, Trump was found liable for sexually assaulting and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll in a civil trial and ordered to pay Carroll $83.3 million. In late May, Trump was found guilty of 34 charges of falsifying business records to cover up an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election.
Trump has long bragged about his appointment of three Supreme Court judges who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, leaving abortion access directly in the hands of state governments.
However, some GOP strategists are not convinced that simply adding a woman to the ticket solves Trump’s problems with women voters.
“I don’t know that necessarily choosing a woman is going to necessarily be helpful in making him appear different than what he is,” said Jason Roe, a Republican strategist who has worked on multiple presidential campaigns. “I do think maybe in terms of campaigning and having a surrogate that can barnstorm the country on his behalf, you know, there could be some appeal there and maybe some female voters that would, you know, be open to hearing a message from a surrogate like that.”
“But it’s also what are the optics,” Roe added. “What does a woman serving as his No. 2 look like to other women? It may look a little too subservient. That might look a little too enabling.”
In a similar vein, Matt Dole, a Republican political consultant based in Ohio, echoed concerns that adding a woman as Trump’s second-in-command wouldn’t remedy the problem.
“Trump has incredible work to do with female voters. He has an uphill battle to fight with female voters,” Dole said. “But I think that the only path forward is for Trump to go carry that message to them directly.”
In a January poll from Quinnipiac University, 58% of women supported President Joe Biden in a hypothetical matchup compared to 36% of women who backed Trump. An April poll from the Wall Street Journal of seven battleground states showed 39% of suburban women claimed abortion was a make-or-break point for their vote.
Trump, ceding to the role abortion might play in costing him women’s votes, attempted to take a centrist stance on the problem to mixed reviews. Anti-abortion groups and lawmakers have denounced the former president’s comments that abortion should be left to individual states, but they have not abandoned Trump either.
Other Republican strategists emphasized that one of Trump’s biggest concerns in a post-verdict world is how independent voters will react to Trump’s legal problems.
“I think the real key number to watch in this race is going to be what is the impact on third party voters,” said national Republican strategist Brian Seitchik. “If you look at the [Robert F.] Kennedy voters, a lot of them look like disillusioned Democrats unhappy with Biden’s running of the country. Are they going to hold their nose and move from Kennedy to Biden, in an effort to quote ‘stop Trump’?”
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A poll from the nonprofit group The 19th News and SurveyMonkey released this month showed 47% of independent women strongly or somewhat agreed with the verdict, while 13% strongly or somewhat disagreed.
But as Noem tries maneuvering back onto Trump’s vice presidential list, she’ll have to contend with a boss who is not keen on being upstaged in the national media.
“Looking at how Trump has historically behaved, he doesn’t want anyone that’s going to necessarily outshine him,” said Roe. “I think one of the mistakes that Kristi Noem made before she wrote the stupidest book of all time is like she was so thirsty about it, and she just clearly was auditioning for it like it was a beauty pageant. And you know, that hasn’t proven to be Trump’s jam.”
