From Conservative Brief, a few weeks before the November election, Gov. Kristi Noem’s campaign got some more great news.
Emerson College Polling and The Hill released a new poll on Wednesday showing that the Republican governor now has a 19-point lead over her Democratic opponent. That’s a huge lead! She has the support of 56% of likely voters in the general election, while Jamie Smith only has the support of 37%. Another 3% said they would vote for Tracey Quint, who is a Libertarian.
Also, 74 percent of South Dakota voters think that Noem will be re-elected, according to the survey. Newsmax said that this includes about 45 percent of registered Democrats, 91 percent of registered Republicans, and 68 percent of Independents and members of other parties.
“Smith leads Noem among independent voters 46% to 39%, and among Democratic voters 80% to 17%; however, Smith’s support is not strong enough to surpass Noem’s majority of Republican voters’ support in South Dakota who represent the majority of registered voters, and she leads among Republicans 83% to 12%,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said in a statement that came with the survey results.
In September, Noem said in a video that she had back surgery and would have to stop campaigning for a while.
An important update from Governor Noem: pic.twitter.com/6gmrPgcqTP
— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) September 12, 2022
“Several weeks ago, about two months ago, I sustained an injury to my back. I’ve been working with excellent doctors here in South Dakota over those weeks to try to alleviate the situation. Unfortunately, this week, I ended up having surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester,” Noem said in a video that was posted to Twitter this week.
In the video, the governor said, “I won’t be able to stand for more than 10, 15 minutes at a time, I won’t be able to get out and about South Dakota like I love to do so much. And you know that about me; that I’m very hands-on and will miss being able to do my normal activities.”
Noem said that she had both good and bad news to tell. She said, “The person who performed that surgery was a neurosurgeon who specializes in spine injuries, and it was a complete success. I’m very grateful for all of their expertise and help and just arrived back home here in Pierre.”
“But I did want to let you all know that I’m going to be very limited in what I will be able to do for the next several months,” she said. “I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate all your support and your prayers. That I’m still working hard here in Pierre every day, and that I’m still campaigning. I’ll do a lot of video updates and a lot of chats with you this was as well, but my ability to get around the state is going to be pretty challenged for the next several months,” she added.
Noem stated, “I have to abide by certain limitations on my activity in order to allow my back to heal properly. In the short term, this will include amount of standing I can do and the amount of travel that I can partake in around our great state.”
In the statement, she said, “I am grateful for the doctors’ and nurses’ steady hands — and God’s grace — as I am now back home in Pierre and on the mend.”
In June, Noem beat Steve Haugaard, the former Republican speaker of the state House. Noem is known for being a close friend of former President Donald Trump.
In the beginning of that month, Noem made headlines when she spoke out against a threat from the Biden administration to cut education funding to states that don’t agree with a new interpretation of Title IX.
“President Biden is holding lunch money for poor Americans hostage in pursuit of his radical agenda,” Noem said in a statement released Thursday morning. “He is insisting that we allow biological males to compete in girls’ sports or else lose funding for SNAP and school lunch programs.”
“South Dakota will continue to defend basic fairness so that our girls can compete and achieve. I would remind President Biden that we have defeated him in litigation before and are ready to do so again,” the Republican governor said, referring to her state’s lawsuit against the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) vaccine mandate, which the Supreme Court threw out in January.
“Mr. President, we’ll see you in court,” she said.
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