This is the traditional time to give thanks and praise, but it seems harder this year. Our collective response – and non-response – to the pandemic lies heavy on the national conscience.
I have relatives in South Dakota who have been alarmed by Gov. Kristi Noem’s inaction. Like Janet Mills in Maine, Noem is that state’s female governor, also elected in 2018.
Unlike Mills, she’s a Republican; South Dakota hasn’t elected a Democratic governor since 1978, though it was close. Noem got 51% against her opponent, a former professional bronc rider who was also state Senate minority leader.
Noem has become the unlikely source of resistance to common sense in the great mask-and-distancing debate. She flirted with national attention when, after a ride on Air Force One with the president, he was rumored to be considering dumping Mike Pence from the ticket in favor of Noem.
Only with Donald Trump could such a rumor have been plausible, and it came to nothing. But Noem has persisted with a coronavirus policy that Trump, had he been a governor, would have applauded: that is, doing nothing.
At a time when most governors, including some Republicans, were shutting down or limiting outdoor gatherings, Noem made no effort to limit the annual mass motorcycle rally in Sturgis, a small city in the western part of the state near the Black Hills.
No one knows how many bikers passed through from Aug. 7-16, but the previous year’s gathering was estimated at 500,000. The official CDC study of COVID cases resulting found 86, but that’s a joke: There’s no way to contract-trace thousands of transients who have no ties to the community.
What we do know is this: South Dakota became the locus of a startling spike in cases that reached peaks that setting national records in both North and South Dakota. The fall “hot spots” were most intense in the states surrounding the Dakotas: Montana, Iowa and Minnesota.
By November, governors in all those states were issuing statewide mask orders – except Noem. She must still feel the glow from Trump’s Independence Day address at Mt. Rushmore, when she presented him with a mockup showing his face as the fifth president on the mountain, and likened him to Teddy Roosevelt.
Her definitive statement came at another Trump campaign rally where she proclaimed, of her fellow South Dakotans, “They’re happy because they’re free.”
They’re also dying at alarming rates. Rarely has New Hampshire’s revolutionary-era slogan, “Live Free or Die,” been taken so literally.
It’s sobering to compare Maine to South Dakota. Both escaped the early brunt of the onslaught that devastated New York City and many urban areas. Afterward, though, Mills announced and maintained restrictions while Noem never did.
By late November, numbers told the story. South Dakota, with 885,000 people, had recorded 821 deaths; Maine 189. South Dakota has had more than 70,000 cases; Maine has just reached 10,000.
Per capita, South Dakota has had ten times as many cases, and seven times as many deaths as Maine. Was it worth it? Voters there may offer a verdict in 2022, but for many it will be too late.
South Dakota has twice the land area of Maine, but its distanced population doesn’t matter. As Dr. Nirav Shah has reminded Mainers many times, geography is no defense against the virus – and it’s rural Maine that’s now hardest-hit, not Portland.
There are larger issues at stake, too. While Mills can be faulted for governing alone, and keeping the Legislature out of session when it’s her clear prerogative to recall lawmakers, it’s hard to rationally criticize her pandemic response.
That hasn’t stopped some Republicans. When Mills recently announced a 9 p.m. indoor curfew for restaurants and tasting rooms, with bars still closed, incoming Senate Leader Jeff Timberlake instantly denounced it: “I fail to see the science and the logic behind this new mandate. Does the virus only come out after 9 p.m.?”
Presumably, that was a rhetorical question; most of us understand that, after an evening out and a few drinks, people aren’t as careful about distancing and mask-wearing – even if there’s no scientific study specifically documenting it.
Mills’s order is clearly an attempt to avoid closing restaurants altogether, as some counties elsewhere are already doing.
Somehow, we are going to have to think together, and pray together, to get through this crisis without hundreds of additional deaths in Maine this winter. Despite promising trials, effective community vaccination is still months away, and in the meantime we have only masks and common sense.
If you still have doubts, then consider which rural state, at this moment in history, you’d rather live in.
Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, reporter, opinion writer and author for 36 years, has published books about George Mitchell, and the Maine Democratic Party. He welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net
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