Kristi Noem’s rise to political fame

Being governor of South Dakota is certainly not as high profile as New York or California, but Noem edged her way into the public eye when she pushed back against restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Per BBC, she was further aligned with former US president Donald Trump when she hosted him at Mount Rushmore in her state in 2020 for a Fourth of July celebration. Noem was widely reported as saying, “We trusted each other, and we got through our challenges together.”

Her alleged affair with a Trump adviser

Kristi, 52, has been married to her husband Bryon Noem since 1992. The couple share three children together. Last year, her marriage came under the spotlight after multiple reports that she had been having an affair with Corey Lewandowski, a Trump adviser.

Per New York Post, Lewandowski has had several affairs and has also been accused of acting inappropriately towards several women, including smacking singer Joy Villa on her “backside”. Noem has denied the speculation.

She grew up on a farm

Noem spent her childhood driving grain carts and pulling calves on the family farm. In her 2022 memoir, Not My First Rodeo, Noem wrote about how her father died in a grain-bin accident as she was pregnant with her first child. She left university early to return to the farm and help run it.

A beauty queen-turned-politician

In 1990, Noem was crowned the South Dakota Snow Queen. She said the judges were looking for a “well-rounded person” who could handle themselves in a variety of situations, per Aberdeen News. She also credited the pageant for giving her experience in public speaking and addressing an audience. She went on to serve as South Dakota’s sole House representative in Congress for eight years before being elected as the state’s first female governor in 2018.

She’s a Trump supporter

Noem has been open about her desire to be Trump’s vice-president pick, telling Fox News host Lawrence Jones that she is ready to take the job if Trump calls: “I’m all-in to do what I can to help the team.”

She has also echoed his comments claiming fraud during the 2020 elections, saying that the election had “shaken the American people’s faith in the integrity of the electoral process”, per South Dakota news site Argus Leader.

Her controversial transphobic policies

Per CNN, Noem signed another bill into law that will ban gender-affirming treatments – both surgical and non-surgical – for transgender minors in her state. “South Dakota’s kids are our future. With this legislation, we are protecting kids from harmful, permanent medical procedures,” she claimed, despite the regret rate for gender-affirming surgery sitting at around just 1 per cent, according to a 2021 study indexed on the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

In 2023, she also asked for the state’s social studies curriculum to be reworked as part of an effort to eliminate critical race theory from public schools.