Foxy Congressperson of the Week: Rep. Kristi Noem

Kristi Noem, continuing a strong tradition of very foxy South Dakotan Legislators. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

This week, South Dakota made a challenge to Illinois for state with the greatest number of Foxy Congresspeople. Previously, Illinois’ two winners had easily held the top spot, but this week Rep. Kristi Noem of South Dakota stepped it up for the Cattle State (that’s not actually what they call it) and evened the score. And of course, her selection maintains my clear preference for Midwestern, Republican legislators.

Kristi Noem is young, used to run a farm all by herself, and has been pictured walking around Washington wearing tight leather boots, which already puts her head and shoulders above most Washingtonians in terms of foxiness. I have to admit, her hair has a certain ‘business in the front, party in the back’ quality to it, but you’ve got to respect a woman who can rock a faux-let.

Perhaps my recognition of Noem’s foxiness was due to the subconscious recognition of a kindred spirit. I have been known to the cops of Southeast Michigan and Northern Indiana as a problem driver since I got my license on my sixteenth birthday. I won’t tell you how many times I have been pulled over or how many tickets I’ve gotten, because one day someone who is thinking about hiring me will read this and throw my application in the shredder. The point is, Kristi Noem has me easily beat. The Congresswoman racked up 27 traffic citations in just over twenty years of driving. The issue threatened to derail Noem’s campaign until it was revealed that her opponent had double-digits worth of tickets himself. Which raises the question: Shouldn’t people who have to live in the Great Plains be allowed to drive as fast as they damn well please?

I made this week’s trip to the Hill at the tail end of the workday on Thursday, so I missed my usual glimpse of Congressional staffers in action. The plus side of this was that I also missed out on having to pretend not to be lost on my way to Noem’s office, because no one was around to judge me. I arrived in Noem’s office and prepared to hand my certificate to her intern, as usual, but got completely distracted by a large picture of a Saiga Antelope hanging on the wall.

I'm not kidding, this animal actually exists. From flickr user belgianchocolate.

Which just proves my hypothesis that people who work on the Hill are their own special brand of weird. Apparently, the Environment staffer in Noem’s office thought it was important for the Congresswoman’s visitors to be greeted by a picture of what appears at first sight to be a badly photoshopped sheep-antelope-elephant hybrid when they walked in the office.

Yet again, the certificate was greeted with enthusiasm and a promise that it would be passed around the office. I got the e-mail addresses of a couple of people on the staff who deal with press, who I e-mailed over the weekend, and who could still e-mail me back. I mean, they could e-mail me back in the same way that an asteroid could hit the earth tomorrow and destroy human society as we know it. Not technically impossible, but it would be pretty shocking.

About Annie White

Annie is a senior in CAS studying political science.

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