A South Dakota man who was fired for flipping the bird in a photo with Governor Kristi Noem has raised more than $8,000 through a GoFundMe campaign.
Stefen Monteau, 30, was let go from his job at the Main Street Cafe & Market in Chamberlain after a photo of him standing beside the Republican governor while putting his middle finger up went viral online.
On 28 October, just weeks before Ms Noem’s reelection bid against her Democratic challenger comes to a head, the governor made a campaign stop at the diner, in the small town of about 2,500 people.
Before leaving the Main Street Cafe & Market, Ms Noem was asked by a constituent to pose for a picture.
That was when Mr Monteau said he was pulled into the frame of the photo-op without his consent – prompting him to flip the bird at the camera.
“Gov Noem turned around and gave her a hug and grabbed my arm and said, ‘Let’s take a picture.’ I did not consent,” he told The Daily Beast.
“During the brief 20-second encounter, I made a hand gesture by my waist for the camera to see as the picture was taken.
“The picture was taken by a member of the campaign team on their phone.”
Mr Monteau said that his intention for making the hand gesture was not to spurn the governor but rather to make the picture unusable by her campaign team as he had not consented to being in it.
“My quick hand gesture that I made was so that the photo would be discredited and would not be of use to her campaign in any way,” he said.
The photo was quickly shared online by Ms Noem’s campaign team before they later took it down, appearing to realise what the man in the photo was doing.
By then, the image had already been widely viewed and commented on by online observers.
Mr Monteau claimed that the incident then prompted his employer at the cafe to fire him from his job, which he had only taken on months before but had come to love.
“The following day after the picture my employer avoided me at work. She left for the day,” he told The Daily Beast.
He added that he then received a Facebook message from his boss Margie Allen indicating that he’d been removed from the work schedule for the weekend.
Mr Monteau told the news outlet that one of his friends told him that Ms Allen had received a message from Ms Noem’s campaign complaining about his gesture.
The Independent reached out to both Ms Noem’s campaign as well as Ms Allen, but did not hear back prior to publication.
Ian Fury, a spokesperson for Ms Noem’s campaign, denied that anyone on her team had called for the 30-year-old cook to be terminated.
“Nobody on the governor’s team ever said that Mr Monteau should lose his job,” Mr Fury said in a statement to The Daily Beast.
Ms Allen did not confirm or deny the claim but told the outlet that she had decided days later on 31 October to let Mr Monteau go.
“It was a HR (human relations) thing,” she said, insisting that it wasn’t about politics but about politeness, as she’d only accommodated the governor’s event because she “never” turns down a request to hold a gathering at her cafe.
“If he had done it out front,” she told the news outlet, pointing to the sidewalk feet from her shop, “I wouldn’t have cared.”
“It’s just wrong,” she added.
Mr Monteau, however, rebuffed Ms Allen’s characterisation of his termination and claimed that she’d told him she’d received “numerous complaints” since the viral picture began making its rounds – with some saying they wouldn’t eat at her cafe anymore.
“She told me that customers said they don’t feel comfortable with me cooking their food because I might spit in their meal or do whatever I want to their meal because I don’t support Noem,” he said.
Shortly after receiving his notice, Mr Monteau, who is a member of the Hunkpati Oyate, Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, and lives in Fort Thompson on the Crow Creek Reservation, set up a GoFundMe to help tide him over till he found his next job.
“I’m the guy in the recent viral pic with Governor Kristi Noem. I was terminated from the place I work as of 7am this morning,” he wrote.
“Customers and people complained to the employer that they don’t feel comfortable with me working at the cafe due to not supporting Kristi Noem, feel that I would spit in their food etc….since I am no longer a cook at the cafe I’ll be job searching in the meantime.”
Donations quickly surpassed his initial goal of $3,000 and, after he secured employment at another spot, he closed the fundraiser down after a few days.
But, in an update shared on 2 November, he revealed that he was now keeping the fundraiser open for any potential legal fees.
“I do work for another place of employment full time now and am very thankful for having a one on one talk with the employer. I plan to use the donated funds to help with any legal fees that will come my way with everything that is going on. Again, thank you all so much,” wrote Mr Monteau.
He explained to The Daily Beast that he is now “looking into whether or not the cafe’s actions were legal”, believing that he might have been let go “for political reasons”.
Ms Noem, who has outspent her Democratic opponent, state lawmaker Jamie Smith, in the midterm election by nearly 6-to-1, has been crisscrossing between the state’s largest cities in the week leading up to the election.
A poll from earlier this fall places the Republican incumbent with a slight advantage over Mr Smith, with the non-partisan 2022 South Dakota Election Study giving her a lead of 4 per cent over her Democratic rival, with a 4 per cent margin of error.
