What our family has done is participate in the farm programs. And so the farm programs I think essentially almost every farmer in South Dakota has participated in those, and they haven't been bailouts, they have been programs that the United States has put forward for farmers to participate in.

I'd rather have a real South Dakotan who has lived in this state and made her living here instead of someone with a fancy East Coast law degree any day.

I think the knowledge about how legislation really affects small businesses is extremely valuable. If you haven't run a small business, then you don't have this kind of knowledge about how a regulation passed or taxes increased affects your bottom line. If you recognize that every new regulation takes that much more time to comply with, requires that many more employees, then it really gives you that foundational basis to make those decisions.

So, a lot of my supporters back home are members of the Tea Party.

A lot of people have tried to put labels on me, but right now I'm focused on being Kristi Noem and getting my message out to South Dakotans.

We have to get government out of the job of picking winners and losers. That's what they've been doing the last year and a half, getting in the way of businesses that are trying to reinvest to get our economy back on its feet.

I think everyday people on the street who have never been affiliated with the tea party movement are alarmed with the spending and the debt that we have.