A spokesman for South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem defended his boss against “conservative cancel culture” in the wake of her decision not to sign a bill about transgender people in female sports leagues.
Ian Fury, the GOP governor’s communications director, argued in a Wednesday statement obtained by the Washington Examiner that her decision to send the bill back to the state Legislature for revisions was being unfairly maligned.
“Governor Noem is very used to fighting off criticism from the left,” he said. “After all, in the past year, she was the only governor in the entire nation to never order a single business or church in her state to close.”
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“But if any number of conservative pundits are to be believed, that same governor who refused to cave is now caving to the NCAA and Amazon on the issue of fairness in women’s sports. What?” Fury added. “Apparently, uninformed cancel culture is fine when the right is eating their own.”
Noem chose to go with what is called a style and form veto and announced on Friday that she would be returning H.B. 1217 to the Legislature in order to have certain changes made, saying the bill was “vague” and had “overly broad language.” The bill would ban transgender girls and women from participating in female sports leagues.
Noem has supported such policy but proposed the legislation be limited to elementary and high school sports and exclude collegiate sports.
Critics view the move as a capitulation to the NCAA, which may decide not to host tournaments in South Dakota if the measure passes, and it could disrupt any plans for her to make a run for the White House.
“If Noem thinks this gambit will save her political career, she is sadly mistaken. Conservative voters will not forget that when given the choice between standing up for the principles of fairness and equality for girl athletes or caving to the left, she chose the latter. This failure in leadership will define her moving forward,” Terry Schilling, president of the conservative American Principles Project, said in a statement.
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“South Dakota has shown that our student athletes can compete with anyone in the country, but competing on the national stage means compliance with the national governing bodies that oversee collegiate athletics,” Noem said in a Friday tweet thread. “While I certainly do not always agree with the actions these sanctioning bodies take, I understand that collegiate athletics requires such a system – a fifty-state patchwork is not workable.”
“Unfortunately, conservatives have been sold down the river by politicians all too many times,” Fury added. “And the immediate assumption was that this was just more of the same. But why would the Governor who stood strong during COVID cave on such a fundamental issue? Answer: she wouldn’t, and she didn’t. If conservative media would take 5 seconds to read past the knee-jerk headlines and actually understand Governor Noem’s position, they’d come to a very different realization.”
