Sometimes you can’t track the sleaze merchants without a scorecard, especially when there’s only six degrees of separation.
Take, for instance, red South Dakota, home of Governor Kristi Noem – AKA Sarah Palin 2.0, with the dumbed-down populist pitch, the veep aspirations, and the rootin’ tootin’ shootin’ shtick. And a Trump toady to boot. She is where the fun begins.
Turns out that after a South Dakota agency rejected her daughter Kassidy’s application to become a certified real estate appraiser, mom sprang into action. She summoned the agency head, the agency head’s boss, and the state labor secretary. They all had a meeting, with Kassidy in attendance. Presto, Kassidy got the certification. Presto, the agency head who’d originally rejected Kassidy was pressured to retire. When the agency head filed an official complaint, the state (i.e. the taxpayers) paid her $200,000 to drop it.
I guess that when Noem says that “we are in a fight for the soul of our nation,” she’s referring to the sanctity of abuse-of-power nepotism. She hasn’t even bothered to deny the press report; she merely accused the media of “trying to destroy” her kids. Until this week, in fact, she might’ve worked out some spin control with the help of Corey Lewandowski, the ex-Trump aide who was serving as her political strategist. But she just fired Lewandowski, in the wake of well-documented allegations that he sexually harassed a Trump donor at a Las Vegas charity event.
You’re gonna need that scorecard soon.
Turns out the donor – the wife of an Idaho construction executive – is talking on the record: “On the evening of September 26 in Las Vegas, Nevada, I attended a dinner to support a charity and spend time with wonderful friends. (Lewandowski) repeatedly touched me inappropriately, said vile and disgusting things to me, stalked me, and made me feel violated and fearful. I am coming forward because he needs to be held accountable.”
So Noem (who’s fine with the dozens of allegations lodged against Trump) has summarily dumped Lewandowski, and apparently that’s not the only reason. A conservative website, citing what it insists are good sources, reported on Wednesday that Noem had been sleeping with Lewandowski “for months.” Noem has heatedly denied that allegation (“these are old, tired attacks on conservative women”), an odd complaint given that the report was posted by a conservative site. Maybe some people on the right simply don’t want her to ascend; intramural MAGA politics are quite vicious.
Lewandowski has also been fired from his day job helming a pro-Trump super PAC. He is being replaced, as PAC boss, by Pam Bondi, who’s best known as the former Florida attorney general who took an illegal $25,000 campaign check from a Trump non-profit foundation (it’s illegal for non-profits to donate to campaigns), and then she magically decided, one month later, not to help prosecute the phony Trump University.
Anyway. I digressed.
With Lewandowski’s alleged wisdom no longer available, Noem (who’s also on her fourth chief of staff in two years) faces a potential Daughtergate probe. Her own attorney general, fellow Republican Jason Ravnsborg, says he is “actively reviewing” the abuse-of-power case.
But that’s a tad awkward, because Noem has demanded that Ravsborg resign or be impeached. That’s because Ravnsborg, while driving his car one night last year, killed a pedestrian on a rural highway. The pedestrian’s head went through Ravnsborg’s windshield, but Ravnsborg told police that he thought he’d hit a deer. He ultimately got off easy, paying fines for two traffic misdemeanors – even though South Dakota public safety officials insisted that he should’ve been charged with second degree manslaughter. But hey, no problem. Ravnsborg released a statement: “I renew my commitment to be transparent and responsive to the needs of the people of South Dakota.”
All told, with scorecard in hand, it does seem that the quality of the average Republican has eroded in recent years. Maybe it all depends on how one defines quality. Maybe the new norm is Kristi Noem gifting Trump a model replica of Mount Rushmore with his face carved next to Abe. But that in particular is one degree of separation we should never abide.