South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said Sunday that former President Donald Trump would benefit from choosing a woman as his running mate for the November presidential election.
The Republican governor told CNN, “polls tell him in the swing states that a woman on the ticket helps him win.”
Her comment was made in response to a question about who he should pick as his vice presidential candidate. So far, President Trump has made no public comment on his choice.
“One in four Republican women haven’t made up their minds because they want to have a woman talking to them about the issues they care about,” said Ms. Noem, who has often been mentioned in the media as a possible running mate.
“And women aren’t monolithic. They don’t care about just one issue. They care about health care, they care about their children, they care about their futures,” she said.
“They care about having an opportunity to have a business and to have a career,” the governor said. “And all of that is being threatened under [President] Joe Biden. But yes, the women vote is extremely important.”
Other politicians who have been flagged as potential running mates for President Trump include North Dakota’s Republican Gov. Doug Burgum, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), and Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Byron Donalds (R-Fla.).
When she was asked by CNN’s Dana Bash, Ms. Noem didn’t say if she is still being considered for the No. 2 position.
“I told President Trump over and over again, he needs to pick whoever helps him win. I have been loyal to him since the very beginning when he first started to run in 2016,” she said, adding that President Trump’s “priority is picking a running mate that can govern on day one, that has been loyal to him, that has experience and run businesses, knows how to be a CEO but also supports him in his policies..”
Book Controversy
In April, Ms. Noem released a book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” that detailed a decades-old instance in which she put down a dog that she described as aggressive. It drew considerable criticism, even from some Republicans.The dog, Cricket, was “untrainable” and was also “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” as well as “less than worthless … as a hunting dog,“ she wrote in the book. “At that moment, I realized I had to put her down.”
When asked again about the dog during the Sunday interview, Ms. Noem said, “I’m a mom and protected my children from a vicious animal. People are put in tough situations in life, and we learn from it.”
In the 2020 election, candidate Joe Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, became the first woman elected vice president. Meanwhile, independent 2024 candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also selected a woman, Nicole Shanahan, as his running mate.
