Noem’s successor hits ‘reset’ after she insisted there was ‘No Going Back’

For a condemnation of Kristi Noem’s performance as governor, just look at what her former lieutenant governor is doing.

You won’t get him to admit that, of course. Larry Rhoden insists Noem did “great things” for South Dakota.

Yet Rhoden has also positioned himself as Governor Reset after taking inspiration from a Native American tribal leader, Chairman J. Garrett Renville of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate.

Noem’s departure to serve in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet was imminent when Renville delivered a State of the Tribes address to the Legislature on Jan. 15.

“Today, let’s reset,” Renville said, sensing an opportunity for better state-tribal relations. “Today, let’s rebuild. Today, let’s start to listen and actually hear.”

Rhoden could have fired back. That’s what Noem did two years ago after Crow Creek Tribal Chairman Peter Lengkeek used his State of the Tribes address to call for better state-tribal collaboration. Her office retaliated against Lengkeek with an 800-word email to the media saying his speech was a “message of division” that perpetuated “false narratives.”

When Rhoden delivered his first address to the Legislature as governor on Jan. 28, he chose to respond differently than Noem. He quoted Renville’s reset invitation and accepted it.

“I could not agree more,” Rhoden said. “We’ve had our ups and downs over the years, but I am asking our tribal leaders to make a fresh start with me.”

Then he took the reset theme and ran with it, using it repeatedly in his public communications.

“I see so much division today — even between those within the same political party,” Rhoden said in a Feb. 28 press release. “As South Dakotans, we need to regain perspective and unite. We need to talk with each other and not at each other. We need to reset.”

During his first two months as governor, Rhoden pushed the reset button so often that his fingers must be cramped and blistered.

He pushed reset on Noem’s penchant for filling her staff with out-of-state ideologues, instead choosing two lifelong South Dakotans with deep experience in state government — Matt Michels and Tony Venhuizen — for two of his first and most important hires (Michels as senior adviser and counsel, and Venhuizen as lieutenant governor).

He pushed reset on Noem’s combative relationship with the media, holding more press conferences during his first two months in office than Noem did during her last two years.

He pushed reset on several years of sharply rising property taxes by quickly ushering his own plan into law, after Noem failed to even propose an idea.

He pushed reset on property rights by signing a ban on eminent domain for carbon dioxide pipelines, after Noem let the issue fester and divide her party to such an extent that 14 Republican legislators lost to challengers in the June primary election.

He pushed reset on Noem’s vindictive attempt to cut state support for South Dakota Public Broadcasting, and he appears ready to sign a budget restoring full funding.

He pushed reset on Noem’s usurpation of legislative power with his signing of three bills — proposed by Chris Karr, a top-ranking state senator — that require greater legislative oversight of state budget transfers, building projects and leases.

And he pushed reset on Noem’s prison debacle by forming a “Project Prison Reset” task force to study South Dakota’s correctional system, after Noem spent and obligated a total of $54 million pursuing an $825 million prison construction plan that lost support during this year’s legislative session.

In other areas, Rhoden has missed opportunities for resets by following Noem’s misguided lead. He signed bills allowing concealed pistols at colleges and bars. He approved legislation inviting self-appointed toilet police to clog up the courts with lawsuits accusing people of using the wrong restroom. He praised President Donald Trump’s Oval Office tantrum against the president of Ukraine.

But even those who disagree with some of Rhoden’s decisions would have to admit he’s showing how much governors can do, and how quickly they can get it done, when they focus on the job they’ve got and strive for civility instead of sowing division.

Noem declared last year in the title of her infamous book — the one with the slain dog and goat and the imaginary meeting with Kim Jong Un — that Trump broke politics for the better and there’s “No Going Back.”

How richly ironic it is, then, that her handpicked successor has been “going back” ever since she left, by resetting the state to its pre-Noem brand of politics and accomplishing more in two months than she did in some whole years of her administration.