In this episode, Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem joined the Doc and the Block podcast to discuss her upbringing and how she got into politics.
Noem grew up on a farm in rural Hamlin County with her siblings. She attended Northern State University from 1990 to 1994, but dropped out after her father was killed in a farm machinery accident which forced her to return home and run the family’s farm and businesses.
During the podcast, Noem explains how she first got into politics because of a federal law that said “if somebody died, they had to pay taxes on everything that they owned.”
“Well, we had acres of land and machinery and cattle and a lot of stuff,” she explains. “But we didn’t have any money in the bank. But the government figured out how much all of our stuff was worth and said we had to pay 55% of that to the government. And it was hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of dollars that we didn’t have. So immediately I’m twenty-two years old, my dad died. I have several businesses to run, I had to quit college. And then I had this bill to pay taxes to pay to the government that I couldn’t pay. I had no way to do it.”
Noem said it took her 10 years to pay off those taxes, making it very difficult to keep the businesses.
“So people asked how I got involved in government politics is that made me mad,” she said. “I couldn’t believe we had a tragedy happen to our family. And then the government tried to take our family business after it. So I just started showing up at meetings, I was raised by a family that said, we don’t complain about things, we fix them. And so I couldn’t just be mad and complain, I needed to show up in meetings and tell people that this tax was unfair to do this to people when they lose somebody. And that’s how I got involved.”
Gov. Kristi Noem – Mistakes Dont Define You – Saying Yes to Yourself and Others
