My grandmother had great influence on me. She was secretary of state in the 1970's, and that's when I was born. She showed me the importance of public service, and she was admired by people regardless of their political party.

We can't allow multinational oil companies boasting of record profits to gouge consumers... We must do what we can to fix this problem.

I love the classroom.

I voted against the climate-change legislation. Not that I don't believe we should move to a clean-energy economy, and it can be good for South Dakota's economy to do so, but it was started out as a very partisan bill in the committee.

While Congress can't overturn the Supreme Court, we can provide carrots and sticks to prevent local governments from unfairly taking property from landowners.

I think that there was a lot of undisclosed money that came into South Dakota, driving a message to paint me as a Washington partisan, which I don't believe that I am, but it was a message that resonated, after pounding it away for a number of weeks.

There's no such thing as a partisan base.