Several South Dakota political insiders think Kristi Noem will stick with her new role in the Trump administration following her dismissal as U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary, rather than jump into a political race in her home state. 

Joel Rosenthal is a former chairman of the South Dakota Republican Party. He said Noem returning to state politics is unlikely in the near term, given her new role as special envoy for The Shield of the Americas, which Rosenthal speculated “was created for her to have a place to go after she became a liability to the president.” 

President Donald Trump announced Noem’s new job Thursday on social media and said he would nominate Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma, to succeed her at the Department of Homeland Security. The moves followed Noem’s appearance before a U.S. Senate panel, where she suffered bipartisan criticism of her handling of the administration’s mass deportation campaign.

Kristi Noem out as DHS secretary; Trump says she’s moving to job as special envoy

The South Dakota Democratic Party celebrated the change.

“Kristi Noem has consistently proven there is one thing that has motivated her rise through politics — herself,” said South Dakota Democratic Party Vice Chair Jessica Meyers in a statement. 

Democratic activist Cory Heidelberger writes the political blog Dakota Free Press. Like Rosenthal, he said Trump having another job ready for Noem signals “she isn’t planning to come back to South Dakota.” Her former lieutenant governor, Larry Rhoden, has been serving as governor since she resigned in January 2025 to join the Trump Cabinet.

“Every signal I’ve seen from Gov. Larry Rhoden, as well as the other Republicans in power, is that they’ve had enough of Kristi, and they aren’t going to sacrifice anything to give her room to come back to power within the state,” Heidelberger said. 

The 2026 governor’s race is closed to Noem. The state constitution says “no person shall be elected to more than two consecutive terms as governor.” Noem was elected in 2018 and 2022. There are four Republicans, including Rhoden, running for the party’s nomination for governor.

There are other political options open to Noem, who is affiliated with a federal political action committee — Keeping Republican Ideas Strong Timely & Inventive (“KRISTI”) —  that has a balance of $1.1 million, while her Kristi for Governor state candidate committee has a balance of $1.8 million.

Noem could run for U.S. Senate or U.S. House in South Dakota. She would need to collect 2,171 nominating petition signatures from registered South Dakota voters and file them by March 31 to appear on the ballot in the primary election, which is June 2. If she instead tried to run as an independent, she’d need 3,502 signatures by April 28. 

The state’s lone U.S. House seat — held by Noem before she was governor — is up for grabs because Republican U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson is running for governor. Heidelberger noted that Republican Attorney General Marty Jackley, now running for U.S. House, lost to Noem in the 2018 primary for governor; therefore, “there’s no way he’ll step aside and let her run for her congressional seat again.” 

And while a U.S. Senate seat is on the 2026 ballot, incumbent U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds has already announced he’s running for reelection, so Noem would have to beat him in the June primary. Rounds was governor of South Dakota from 2003 to 2011, and has served in the Senate since 2015. He has already earned Trump’s endorsement for reelection. 

Pat Powers, a Republican, writes the South Dakota political blog Dakota War College. He said that with only a few weeks left to collect signatures until petitions are due to get on the South Dakota ballot, “I think the window for getting into the race is closed.”

Beating Rounds would come with its own challenges, given he “has had a campaign in motion for months, is popular in South Dakota, and already has President Trump’s endorsement,” Powers said.

A Republican co-host of Dakota Town Hall, a South Dakota politics podcast, Jake Schoenbeck, said he is “of two minds” about Noem’s future.

“A logical person would look at Rounds and see their endorsement from Trump, war chest, and general appeal and think ‘I don’t have a chance,’” Schoenbeck said. “But then there’s Noem, who seems to operate on a hubris so large she might be able to convince herself she still walks on water in South Dakota.”

Schoenbeck added that he thinks Rounds “would trounce her if she got in the race.” Noem, who was a legislator before her service in Congress and as governor, has never lost an election.

In a social media post Thursday, Noem wrote that she looks forward to her new role as a special envoy for a new “Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere.” Trump said the initiative will be announced Saturday at a conference in Doral, Florida.