When South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem backpedaled on her support for a state bill banning transgender participation in women’s sports leagues, social conservatives denounced the rising Republican star as a traitor.
Noem on Friday partially vetoed the popular bill, warning state legislators that she feared retribution from the NCAA, which in the past has fought states on transgender issues. Noem previously had supported the bill enthusiastically, leading many of its proponents to excoriate her sudden hesitation as a bow to the state’s left-leaning Chamber of Commerce.
“We are shocked that a governor who claims to be a firebrand conservative with a rising national profile would cave to woke corporate ideology,” said Kristen Waggoner, general counsel at the advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, which supported the bill.
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Noem, who is rumored to be a future presidential contender, on Monday defended her decision on Tucker Carlson Tonight, telling the Fox News host that she believed the bill wouldn’t protect the state from the NCAA. Noem denied caving to corporate interest, pointing to her past efforts to protect women’s sports. Carlson, unsatisfied, pressed her repeatedly on the issue before ending the interview.
The transgender fiasco is Noem’s first since her leadership during the coronavirus pandemic catapulted her into the national spotlight. And it recalls the stumblings of another Republican star confronted with a crisis over social issues: Mike Pence.
“It’s a familiar playbook,” said Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, saying that both Noem and Pence backed off their principles when faced with hard choices related to sexual orientation and identity.
While governor of Indiana in 2015, Pence became embroiled in a fight that had both gay marriage proponents and social conservatives at his throat. The issue was the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which Pence signed with broad approval from Republicans. It gave businesses wider legal wiggle room to object conscientiously to participation in gay marriage ceremonies. But it soon became a controversy that left a lasting mark on Pence’s career.
A series of Fortune 500 companies, as well as the NCAA, opposed the law after Pence signed it. Salesforce and Angie’s List threatened to yank their businesses from the state unless Pence changed his mind. Celebrities, politicians, and street protesters spoke out against the governor. And as the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges drew nearer, Indiana’s RFRA protections became a national lightning rod.
Pence, who at the time was considering a presidential run, attempted to do damage control by signing further legislation intended expressly to protect gay and transgender people from discrimination. But this move only angered religious conservatives, Pence’s base, who complained that the new legislation gutted the protections given to them in the original bill.
From that point on, the Indiana governor faced alienation from social conservatives in his party until former President Donald Trump picked him up as a running mate in 2016. And even then, Pence was treated with skepticism by some more doctrinaire conservatives, many of whom regarded his RFRA flip as an act of cowardice.
“It was the worst we’ve ever been stabbed in the back by a Republican,” conservative Iowa radio host Steve Deace told Politico in 2016. “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen.”
And as Noem faces similar backlash from social conservatives, some see clear parallels between the South Dakota governor’s floundering and Pence’s performance in his first national trial. Anderson, who helped lead the intellectual fight against gay marriage, said that both Republicans caved because they were beholden to corporate bullying.
“We’re familiar with crony capitalism — when Big Business rigs the game in their favor,” Anderson said. “They do the same on cultural issues. We need political leaders who will stand up to the bullies and protect ordinary Americans.”
But Noem’s slip-up doesn’t mean that her political career is over. After he failed social conservatives, Pence not only survived in the party but thrived as Trump’s ambassador to evangelical and anti-abortion voters. The vice president was a stabilizing force in a turbulent administration, famously never criticizing Trump. Pence only distanced himself from the president only after Trump called him a traitor during the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot.
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Pence’s attachment to Trump and his behavior at the end of the ex-president’s term makes him a leading 2024 candidate, according to some polls. And if Noem has similar ambitions, she has a long way to go, said Terry Schilling, executive director of the American Principles Project, one of the leading groups supporting the bill.
“She’s going to have to carry a lot of water to make up for this,” Schilling said of her flip on the transgender bill. “It was the spirit of Mike Pence that she tapped into here.”
