Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota is campaigning for former President Donald Trump as he continues to lead the 2024 GOP presidential primary race.
As seen and heard in the video below at a Team Trump event in the Mount Rushmore State, Noem said: “There’s only one person I trust to tell me the truth and to actually follow through with what he says he was going to do, and that’s President Trump,” to which the audience applauded. Noem revealed, “The best gift that he gave me, the last several years of when he was in the White House, was that he let me do my job.”
When every other state shut down, @realdonaldtrump let me do my job.
— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) January 6, 2024
We kept South Dakota open — and we thrived because of it.
Our economy is growing because, in SD, everyone gets up and goes to work.
President Trump will bring that kind of success to the entire nation. pic.twitter.com/hV5Z3km4Dh
Noem, who proudly refused to issue a statewide mandate to wear face masks during the pandemic, reminded the audience: “When every other state shut down, I invited people to come to South Dakota” and mentioned hosting the “fantastic” Sturgis rally.
[Note: The 10-day Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in August 2020 which attracted nearly 500,000 people was deemed a “superspreader” event and reportedly led to a 35 percent increase in coronavirus cases in South Dakota. One study determined that the Sturgis rally led to 266K new U.S. coronavirus cases.]
Noem added: “Since we did that and embraced freedom we have broken every single record that we ever had in the state of South Dakota,” and claimed “we have moved hundreds and hundreds of businesses to South Dakota and tens of thousands of people have moved to our state.”
[Note: According to the Dakota Institute for Business and Economic Analysis, the most notable domestic migration (“inmigration”) in South Dakota occurred in 2021 and 2022 when “a net inmigration of more than 6,000 new residents occurred each year.”]
On January 2, 2024, Noem released the ad below in which she plays a medical professional in scrubs pushing a gurney with a patient on it down the hallway of a hospital. She turns to the camera and says: “We’ve got close to 20,000 open jobs in South Dakota including for nurses,” and smiles, “So I’m helping out until we fill them.” At the end of the ad, she finds herself outside of the hospital with the patient still on the gurney and says, “I think I took a wrong turn.”
“Let’s get some help in here — STAT!”
— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) January 2, 2024
South Dakota has close to 20,000 open jobs, including for nurses. 🩺
And visit https://t.co/Z14sqo8WZH start your move to South Dakota today. pic.twitter.com/PxjYHrtMpz
[Note: According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, registered nurses receive $42.80 per hour on average. The highest hourly mean wage for RNs is found in California ($64.10); South Dakota is ranked the lowest in the nation with a $31.01 per hour average. Housing and overall cost of living are higher in California, which ranks third in the nation, though South Dakota ranks among the most expensive states for health care, ranking 8th to California’s 24th.]
