South Dakota’s Kristi Noem gaining national attention

Kristi Noem announces her arrival with a clatter of boot heel on the tile floor of a fast-food restaurant. She orders lunch herself. A small bowl of soup.

The woman that some have dubbed the “next Sarah Palin” travels light. With just one aide in tow, she makes her way around an eatery, greeting residents of this small South Dakota town, which sits an hour north of Sioux Falls. She’s tall and angular, with a Westerner’s bearing. She’s between campaign events, but she’s dressed casually, in jeans.

In its typically understated way, the Drudge Report on Tuesday declared “another Republican star is born” after Noem’s campaign announced she had raised $1.1 million in the last quarter, the most of any House GOP challenger. Noem is running against Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, a three-term incumbent and member of a prominent South Dakota political family. Noem’s third-quarter take doubled Herseth Sandlin’s.

Until this week, Noem, 38, had the distinction of being one of the few Republican challengers nationwide who had lost ground in a House race, after a history of speeding tickets and dodging court appearances came to light, and after she turned in an uneven performance in a series of debates.

Still, polls show the race for the district, which covers the entire state, to be tight — and money could prove to be the great equalizer, especially where, as here, advertising rates are cheap. A Democratic “Blue Dog,” Herseth Sandlin voted against the healthcare overhaul, against the “cap-and-trade” climate bill, and against the Wall Street bailouts, giving Noem less to work with than most Republican candidates.

Noem, who has been a state legislator for four years, has responded by tying Herseth Sandlin to unpopular House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) everywhere she can, a strategy that’s being replicated in races across the country. She’s also tried to paint Herseth Sandlin, 39, as an out-of-touch creature of Washington, suggesting that the graduate of Georgetown University law school doesn’t truly live in the state.

Herseth Sandlin’s campaign has labeled Noem an extremist who is weak on policy issues. While speaking favorably of the “tea party” movement — which has a strong presence in the state — Noem does not bill herself as a product of it. And unlike many tea-party candidates, Noem runs as a fierce opponent of abortion.

“The tea party,” Noem said last week in an interview in Brookings, “has had a big impact in terms of framing the issues. But it’s not just tea partiers who are concerned with the [federal] spending that is going on. I think everyday people on the street who have never been affiliated with the tea party movement are alarmed with the spending and the debt that we have.”

Ironically, Herseth Sandlin makes her home with her husband, former Rep. Max Sandlin, not far from the restaurant where Noem gave the interview. Max Sandlin’s work as a lobbyist in Washington has become another issue in the contest.

Noem views the race as a “choice between the whole philosophy of governing,” she said. “We have to get government out of the job of picking winners and losers. That’s what they’ve been doing the last year and a half, getting in the way of businesses that are trying to reinvest to get our economy back on its feet.”

While South Dakota has one of the healthiest economies in the nation, Noem said that the legislative climate in Washington has created uncertainty for small-business owners.

“I spend almost every day visiting with voters and visiting with business owners in this state,” she said. “Every one says: ‘Listen, I’d love to reinvest. I’d love to hire people. But I have no idea what this healthcare bill is going to do to my bottom line. I have no idea what this financial reform bill is going to do…. I’m not going to step out a limb and do any of those until I know what this government is going to do to me.’”

The relatively sound economy here has made federal spending the central issue in the race, she said. And she speaks of something being lost in America, a refrain that has become familiar this year on the campaign trail. “It’s the spending and the debt that this country is accumulating that is alarming to them. That is what the general voter on the street doesn’t understand. They honestly feel as though their children, if this continues, aren’t going to have the same opportunities they had growing up.”

A farmer and rancher who dropped out of college after her father was killed in a freak mishap, Noem has been criticized as a hypocrite for accepting more than $3 million in farm subsidies. But it’s her more than 20 speeding tickets — as well as two warrants for her arrest for failing to show up in court — that may have damaged her the most. While it may sound like a relatively benign issue, it resonates in South Dakota, where seven years ago, then-Rep. Bill Janklow killed a motorcyclist in an accident and resigned the seat that Herseth Sandlin now holds.

Richard Casey, a Sioux Falls lawyer and former Democratic congressional candidate, called Noem’s record “a character issue. It’s a failure to take responsibility.”

Noem, a mother of three, has pledged to try and set a better example. But she calls such attacks a “diversion.”

The down-and-dirty campaign has rattled her at times. “I’m new. I’m not seasoned at this,” she says at one point, but voters, she maintained, “don’t want someone who’s perfect. They don’t want somebody who’s special. They want somebody who’s just like them.”

During the interview, a tornado siren blared, filling the stark Dakota landscape with piercing noise. The weekly test. Noem paid it no heed. But then, she — and other candidates across the country like her — are sirens of their own. And the voters, with the November elections less than three weeks away, appear to be listening.

joliphant@tribune.com