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Noem and Dixon talk COVID orders, immigration and crime while making the case for Trump • Michigan Advance

“I’m here in Michigan tonight because leadership has consequences. It depends on who is in charge.”

That was the message from Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem on Sunday as she campaigned in the days leading up to Republican former President Donald Trump along with former Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon and U.S. Rep. Katt Commack (R-Fla.). Trump ran in the election on Tuesday.

Michigan has been ground zero in the battle for swing state Electoral College votes – the Mitten State has 15 of the 270 votes needed to win the White House – and that has seen numerous visits from Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and their various deputies.

Noem, South Dakota's first female governor, is a Trump ally who rose to national prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic for her refusal to issue a statewide mandate to wear face masks.

As the event's de facto moderator, Noem was quick to set the tone with familiar conservative talking points like illegal immigration and border control policy, placing the blame squarely on Harris.

“Kamala Harris has let 13,000 murderers into this country and 16,000 rapists into this country just by facilitating this open border,” Noem said. “Just think about your county and how small the population is in your community, that there are four other murderers in your community, that's the average for the entire country.”

Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon (from left) and Florida U.S. Rep. Kat Cammack speak to about 200 people at Baker Events on Nov. 3, 2024 in Holland. | Sarah Leach

Despite numerous studies published in national media revealing a link between illegal workers and violent crime, Noem said the problem has reached a peak in the United States

“[Harris] has allowed them to come to this country and sign up for free programs and food stamps and all sorts of dollars to take care of them and their housing while showing no respect for American citizens and our veterans and people fighting here in America received from this White House,” Noem said.

Dixon, who also campaigned for Trump on Sunday alongside Hamtramck Mayor Amer Tlaib on the southeastern side of the statesaid the border control issue is one of the biggest threats to women and children in Michigan.

“We have observed this Riley's sheets and the Jocelyn Nungarays and the Ruby Garcia of the country are hunted, raped and murdered – it is the women, I keep telling people, who are victims of this open border. I think we are all victims of this open border, but in the end it is disproportionately women who commit the most heinous crimes,” said Dixon, who lost to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2022 by about 11 points, or nearly 470,000 votes.

“When I hear that one in six women is raped, every part of my body and soul tells me: We have to stop this,” she said.

Despite Trump's fiery personality in interviews and public appearances, both Noem and Dixon described him as a reasonable person who is open to dialogue with critics.

“There's a man who's a former president and wants to be president of the United States again who says, 'I hear what you're saying.' That’s what it’s all about for me,” Dixon said. “Sometimes there are disagreements; That doesn't mean loving one another is off the table, and that's where we've come to in this country. That's what I love about this campaign. It was a campaign of sitting, talking and conversing.”

Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon (from left) and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem speak to about 200 people at Baker Events on Nov. 3, 2024 in Holland. | Sarah Leach

Noem said that despite Trump's billionaire status, he is in many ways an everyman because he is authentic.

“I remember watching President Trump on TV coming down a gold escalator in 2016 and I thought, 'Who does that?' But you know what? “He is who he is and he’s not going to pretend to be something he’s not and he’s honest,” Noem said. “He does this because he doesn’t think he’s better than us. He’s just going to be who he is, tell the truth and fight for us and be exactly what we need in this country, someone who is a leader that we trust.”

Despite occurring two years after the pandemic phase of COVID-19, the pandemic has been a frequent topic of conversation, with Noem one of the few Republican governors in the US to refuse to enact relief measures such as masking and social distancing, as Whitmer did in Michigan did.

“I've never seen families suffer as much as they did in Michigan, the way they closed their state and the businesses that were closed and the restaurants that weren't allowed to serve people,” Noem said of Whitmer's statewide orders Year 2020 “It was shocking to see. It was pretty devastating.”

Dixon, who said she could run for governor again “if God says so,” said she is also deeply concerned about the rise in gun violence at schools and college campuses across the country.

“It really concerns me that my daughters are not safe on a college campus in this country … in a state where someone walked onto a college campus with a gun and started shooting, and the same thing at one High School,” she said, referring to the mass shooting at Michigan State University in 2023 that left three people dead and five injured, as well as the mass shooting at Oxford High School in Oakland County in 2021 in which four people were killed and seven injured.

They existed 445 mass shootings across the country so far in 2024, according to Gun Violence Archive.

Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and Florida U.S. Representative Kat Cammack address approximately 200 people at Baker Events on November 3, 2024 in Holland. | Sarah Leach

Although the Democratic-led Michigan House and Senate passed a series of gun control laws in 2023 and 2024 in response to the incidents that made national headlines, Dixon said officials have not found good solutions.

“We’re still not focused on school safety and how we keep people safe,” Dixon said. “This is something that bothers me every day. When will we start finding a solution? Because when you talk about a problem, the solution doesn’t just come out of nowhere.”

According to the latest New York Times/Siena polls, Harris and Trump are tied at 47% Opinion pollalthough Harris is up 49% to 48% in a Morning consultation poll and 51% to 48% in the Marist Survey together with three other Surveys Harris was in the lead. Trump has a rare lead in one Washington Post poll The study released Thursday shows he is up 47% to 45% among registered voters and is ahead 49% to 48% a year from now Emerson survey published on Tuesday (margin of error 3 points). Harris leads Michigan by 0.7 points in FiveThirtyEight's Survey average.

Early voting in Michigan ended Sunday and in-person voting took place Tuesday. The Overall absentee return rate in the state was around 74% as of Thursday, with counties across the state reporting average response rates between 71% and 85% less than a week before Election Day. Statewide, an average of 100,000 voters per day voted at early, in-person voting sites.

Almost 3.2 million votes have already been cast, according to the Foreign Minister.

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