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Noem Hires Texas Pol as Communications Chief

The people Kristi Noem hires to speak for her aren’t South Dakotans, because the people Kristi Noem is speaking to aren’t South Dakotans.

This is the Job Jordan Overturf thinks he'll get from Kristi Noem. Instagram, retrieved 2021.07.06.
This is the Job Jordan Overturf thinks he’ll get from Kristi Noem. Posing at the National Presidential Wax Museum in Keystone, SD, Twitter, likely taken 2021.06.14, posted 2021.06.28 retrieved 2021.07.06.

This spring, South Dakota’s Governor gave a Republican consultant in Kansas a $30K contract to help her hire a new communications director. That Kansas crony found Noem’s new chief propagandist in Texas:

Noem has hired Jordan Overturf, who has been the director of communications at Texas House Republican Caucus, to advise her and help her communicate with the audience she is clearly targeting.

Like Overturf, they’re not South Dakotans.

He announced the new job on Twitter on July 3.

“Today, we took our first step to becoming South Dakotans! On July 15, I will officially begin my role as Senior Communications Advisor to Gov. Kristi Noem. This is an amazing opportunity and I am so grateful to everyone who has helped me get to this point in my career” [Tom Lawrence, “Once Again, Gov. Kristi Noem Reaches Outside of South Dakota to Hire Top Staffer. This Time She Went to Texas,” South Dakota Standard, 2021.07.06].

Once again, you’d think Noem could find some eager South Dakotans with qualifications to serve the highest office in this state. But once again, the qualifications Noem is looking for aren’t local knowledge and a commitment to serving South Dakota but connections with pols in other states who can boost her bid for the Presidency in 2024.

20 Comments

  1. Well, its easy, since she’s sending South Dakotans to defend the border in Texas, she thought they should return the favor. Its just too bad that you all have to pay for it, or rather him.

  2. Arlo Blundt

    Well..another huge expenditure on ego and ambition. So what’s this guy know that a 100 South Dakotans who would like to serve in this kind of position do not know??? He’ll get to Pierre and won’t know Kennebec from Kadoka, Murdo from Menno, Sisseton from Lesterville.

  3. grudznick

    Well, he looks like a very nice, well coiffed young man. We should all, in the Great State of South Dakota, be wishing him success in doing a great job at…err…his new job.

  4. grudznick

    Mr. Blundt, it’s possible Lesterville will be on one of the places he learns about early on.

  5. Arlo, I’m sure he’ll like Sisseton a town that both Joe Robbie and Floyd Westerman came from you know half white, half Native American. The very name should attract him.

  6. Scott

    Attended a large gathering recently. Most people were SD natives who have moved on after graduation. Everybody seemed to know of Noem. However very few had a good impression of her. I heard this statement numerous times “What is wrong with your governor Noem?”

  7. Arlo Blundt

    Well..grudz..its been over 50 years since I darkened that door to a landmark den of inequity in Lesterville…is it really still open for business?? some things never change in South Dakota.and rightly so.

  8. grudznick

    It is probably that long for grudznick as well, Mr. Blundt. Perhaps you and I well-nigh crossed paths there.

  9. Arlo Blundt

    well..grudz, I doubt it..I was just there to slacken my thirst after playing amateur baseball in the tri state league. I was in the twilight of a very mediocre baseball career.

  10. grudznick

    In those days it was indeed a good place to slacken one’s thirst.

  11. President Noem in 2024?

    Perhaps VP to Trump?

    Or maybe cabinet .. doesn’t matter.

    Governor Noem is ready to serve.

    I’d like to have a conversation with Rhoden.

  12. grudznick

    The Rhoden Rhangers, Mr. Dale, have a strong presence in your area and occasionally have libations with the Lt. Governor, or so I am told.

  13. Guy

    Well, I don’t know what to tell you Cory??? Based on Noem’s actions from the past year, the interests of South Dakota citizens are NOT her priority. She could care less because she has a “more important political agenda” in her mind: It’s Kristi Noem’s World and we’re all are just living in it.

  14. Porter Lansing

    Well, he looks like a very nice, well groomed, clean young man. We should all, in and from, the Great State of South Dakota, be wishing him success in doing a great job at his new position.

  15. DaveFN

    Right on, Cory. Noem needs staff who know her potential base better than does she and can speak to them better than she —as provincial as she is–ever could.

    A kind of our-sourcing for expertise she does not have, in the hopes her purchase will ultimately get her votes. What good if any her purchase with South Dakota dollars does for South Dakota is entirely secondary to her primary motive, sorry to say.

  16. Lottie

    Perhaps he can be governor and send KN away. He might have more common sense.

  17. Swedes still open in Lesterville? Not possible.

  18. Jake

    Have South Dakota Republicans ever “tallied up” the huge amounts of taxpayer money this woman has spent over the last year and a half with her ‘fling’ or ‘thing’ about fame and POTUS lust? And we were always told of the GOP being a party of ‘responsibility’ and ‘down-home, Apple pie’ values!

    What say the GOP? Crickets? Anything besides defense of “The big Lie?”

    Oh, I forget, now as we have critical race theory bashing to take our minds off of what the Trump and GOP did to our country on Jan. 6th?!!!

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