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Resume Padding: Noem Adds “Home Health Nurse” to Work History

Team Noem must have gotten some focus-group feedback saying the Rodeo Queen image isn’t resonating with enough key demographics. Thus, it appears South Dakota’s part-time Governor is padding her campaign résumé with another fantasy-stoking position:

Now, most people know that I’ve done a lot of different things in my life. I’ve been a farmer and a rancher. Probably what you don’t know is I used to do carpet cleaning telemarketing. I used to sell carpet cleaning over the phone. I used to sell vacuum cleaners. I was a home health nurse. I was a grocery store checkout girl. What else did I do? I was a waitress. I loved that job, actually. That was great. I’ve done a lot of things [emphasis mine, Gov. Kristi Noem, speech to CPAC, Dallas, Texas, 2021.07.11, transcribed by Rev.com].

A nurse who makes house calls?

I recognize that hair

Kristi Noem, Snow Queen 1990, posted to Kristi Noem Facebook, 2015.02.05.
Kristi Noem, Snow Queen 1990, posted to Kristi Noem Facebook, 2015.02.05.

…but don’t let the white dress and gloves fool you. According to SDCL 36-9-37, nurses have to have completed an approved nursing program. Noem’s degree is in political science, not nursing, and she only received that degree in 2012, after interning for herself in Congress. No biography I recall reading has ever mentioned that Noem completed an associate’s degree or the NCLEX or received any kind of credential that would allow her to practice nursing, let alone that she has actually worked as a licensed nurse.

Maybe Kristi was just letting her mouth run ahead of the facts, as she seems wont to do in front of her frequent out-of-state audiences. Or maybe Kristi has somehow kept quiet about her career in nursing… in which case I’d love to hear your stories about house calls from Kristi. Readers, the lines are open….

24 Comments

  1. Guy 2021-07-23 09:11

    “Home Health Nurse,” hmmmmmm. I need Noem to sit down and have a frank discussion with my 93-year old Grandma who was actually a registered nurse for over 45 years. My Grandma earned her degree in nursing in the mid-1940’s by attending the nursing school at the old Aberdeen hospital. This was before they built the Presentation Nursing School campus. My Grandma worked her way up to Director of Nurses while still taking on the duties of her small nursing staff at our little community hospital in Montana. Throughout her career, she took many on-call shifts that would wear out most of us, including “Home Health Nurse” Kristi Noem. She even wore her white uniform and starched hat long after other nurses ditched their traditional uniforms for scrubs.

  2. Donald Pay 2021-07-23 09:19

    “Most people know….” Anyone else think this is a window into her personality disorder?

    I would be willing to bet that most people don’t know that much about Kristi Noem, but that Kristi thinks everyone is wanting to know more about her. She certainly is an attention whore.

  3. mike from iowa 2021-07-23 09:45

    If she is lying about this, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time. I suspect she will double down if/when confronted with this nugget. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time, in spades. Donald Pay is right on all counts.

  4. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2021-07-23 09:55

    Guy, thanks for the note about your grandma’s extensive nursing experience. Even in the 1940s, one had to have a degree to become a nurse. Either Noem will have to produce some nursing credentials to back up this new résumé claim, or she’ll have to admit she misspoke and meant to describe this new gig she’s added to her work history as something other/less than “nurse”.

  5. mike from iowa 2021-07-23 10:33

    Thanks to Mr Pay, when addressing Noem one can use the word Aw and not be in sympathy with her. Aw for attention whore. Works for me.

  6. Ryan 2021-07-23 11:25

    Liars gonna lie. Isn’t there one gal-darned journalist in this state who will ask noem follow-up questions when she says crap like this? Sheesh.

    Side note, lots of people are upset that Sanford is making the covid vaccine mandatory. Mostly people who don’t work at Sanford and who aren’t patients haha. Idiots.

  7. Porter Lansing 2021-07-23 11:57

    South Dakota’s Governor was a Kirby vacuum cleaner, door to door salesperson?

    That explains why she lies like Trump.

  8. Porter Lansing 2021-07-23 12:06

    To Clarify (like butter):

    A Kirby vacuum cleaner is also a carpet cleaner. The way the sales people get into your home is by selling you carpet cleaning at a ridiculously low price. While the sales person is very slowly cleaning a piece of your carpet, you’re subjected to a two hour sales pitch on a vacuum “system” that these days goes for $2700. If you get fed up with the pitch and “pitch” the seller out, your carpet remains half cleaned up but your wallet doesn’t end up half cleaned out.

  9. Donald Pay 2021-07-23 13:46

    “I was a grocery store checkout girl…I was a waitress.” Let’s try to professionalize this resume a bit. But first, I want to say that I don’t have any criticism of Noem for listing her work experience. People should be proud of the work they have done.

    One thing she might want to do is ditch the sexist terms because jobs are gender neutral. She is “Governor,” not “Governess” after all. Maybe when she was a “checkout girl” she was a girl, but “checker” or “cashier” or “check out staff” is better. Regarding her restaurant job, “wait staff” or “server” is preferred.

  10. Arlo Blundt 2021-07-23 14:45

    well…she is a walking, talking overstatement…”Home Health Aide” might be the appropriate title…a nurse has specific training and a license…did or does she have a license to practice as a nurse??? She is not a Certified Nursing Assistant(CNA), I assume, as that designation requires specific training and certification…I have no idea what her job description was and she should share that with her public…did she take blood pressure and temperature and report vitals to a nurse or other practitioner???? or did she just “look in” ” on the homebound?? Both are a long, long, way from being a home health care nurse.

  11. Arlo Blundt 2021-07-23 15:13

    Well…she’ll probably shrug it off as a staff error…but goodness, we pay over 100,000 dollars a year for those ‘press aides” or “public information specialists”…..we should expect accuracy not the distribution of taffy.

  12. Nick Nemec 2021-07-23 17:41

    Her “I was a home health nurse.” statement really pisses me off. My wife, now a certified nurse practitioner, has been a nurse of one accreditation or another since first passing her board exam in 1976. My daughter is a 2011 SDSU graduate registered nurse. Both of these women worked their butts off to earn the title “nurse”, nursing school isn’t for the faint of heart or lazy. I doubt Kristi Noem has the ability to successfully complete the course of study.

    Her “I was a nurse” claim is no different than if she claimed she was in the Marines because she once shot a rifle or was in the Navy because she took a boat ride on Lake Oahe. She is lying, she knows she is lying and she doesn’t care. It is disgusting.

  13. M 2021-07-23 19:05

    You are spot on Arlo. She uses hyperbole to embellish her resume. She could have been a home health caregiver but not a nurse. She doesn’t have the years of education that it takes. Had she been working in a school as a paraprofessional, she would have claimed to have been a teacher.

    I wonder when and where she waited tables and why she loved it so much. Did she moonlight while in Washington D.C. or did she wait tables while briefly attending college? Perhaps she worked at truck stop like the Henny Penny or was really a car hop at an A & W?

    I’m interested because I made more money waiting tables in the 80’s in California for 20 hours a week than I made in S. D. teaching until retirement in 2014. Marie Callenders was a fine family restaurant then, not many around anymore. They would not have hired Kristi Noem because we were team players like so many other food establishments. Bullies like her don’t last long.

  14. Guy 2021-07-23 19:19

    The next candidate to take on Kristi Noem should focus squarely on: SUBSTANTATIVE ISSUES and be able to effectively communicate them to every day South Dakotans. They also need to relate those issues to South Dakotans in a way that shows Kristi Noem is an all image- driven, walking, talking, campaigning fairy tale who is using our state to step on her way up to the palace, we call the White House.

  15. OldtimerDon 2021-07-23 19:41

    I remember my dad saying that if you give a liar enough rope the person will ultimately hang himself (herself this case). I don’t think the Republican inner polls are showing her in a very favorable light. DeSantis is rolling her before she even gets out of the starting gate. However, if she does surpass DJT’s monumental number of lies, she may still get a chance to service him (as a VP candidate). Would be a perfect match (made in hell)!
    I no longer live in SD, but hope there are enough good Republicans there to try to restore the dignity of the party.

  16. Porter Lansing 2021-07-23 20:22

    It’s a lot easier for the rest of America to ignore your Governor.
    -We learned.
    -When Trump beat Jeb Bush, in their primary, much of it came about because every lie he told was amplified and rebroadcast over and over by the truthful media. (i.e. NBC – CBS & ABC)
    -Trump was the daily joke and the truthful media crawled all over each other to get his image in front of us.
    -It’s understandable and tolerable that y’all in SudDakot hang on her every lie.
    -She’s entertaining and that’s all Ian Fury’s got.
    -Exposure.
    -Truth be told, more Americans know how to pronounce your state capital than know who Kristi Noem is.
    -And, 75% of Americans pronounce it Pee Air.

  17. DaveFN 2021-07-23 20:58

    Kristi emptied a bedpan once, and having done so, now fancies herself a home health nurse.

    Zhuangzi fell asleep and dreamt that he was a butterfly. When he woke up, he didn’t know whether he was a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly or whether he was a butterfly now dreaming he was a man.

    Lacan tells us received notions of the Cartesian subject–object distinction collapse in the moment of the gaze: should one dream of a butterfly one effectively is a butterfly.

    Kristi, our dreamer.

  18. Aaron 2021-07-23 21:43

    Did she mention cheerleading coach?

  19. Buckobear 2021-07-23 22:14

    Next thing you know it will be “brain surgeon” because she’s met that Ben Carson guy.

  20. Lottie 2021-07-23 23:03

    Thats kinda interesting kn being a actual nurse, maybe. lol? Some people throw that term around without knowing it involves education and state boards. I should know, its a life of dedication.

  21. Guy 2021-07-23 23:58

    Cory, by the way, I forgot to mention: nice touch with the hillarious Ferris Bueller clip! LOL!!! I think it fits her narrative perfectly.

  22. David Newquist 2021-07-24 09:08

    The inspiration for Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

  23. Mark Anderson 2021-07-24 23:20

    Come on, its the rags to riches Repub narrative, pulling herself up by her cowboy boots. It’s just Repub village talk everyone. Feel good talk, hooray for me, hooray for Merica.

  24. V 2021-07-25 05:26

    And of all the jobs on Kristi’s resume, ACTING as governor is the easiest for her and pays the most. She has literally created her own job description, along with the perks and fame. Blowing steam out of her nostrils like Rocky, she punches her fists in the air at the imaginary demons that torment her. Gosh what a childhood she must have had.

    As lost as she is, my prayer group still prays that she visit Aberdeen’s Land of Oz to find a heart, a brain, and some courage.

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