Kristi Noem's Controversial Reputation Has Plagued Daughter Kassidy In More Ways Than One

Kristi Noem's daughter, Kassidy Noem-Peters, doesn't want to inherit her reputation and all the negative attention that comes with it. Speaking to Vanity Fair in December 2025, Kassidy shared her thoughts on the nepo baby labeling, admitting, "I guess I felt like everywhere I went, people just knew me as Kristi's daughter, which I didn't think was a bad thing, but it definitely put a pressure on me." Notably, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary's daughter was at the center of the nepo baby discourse not too long before the interview was published. As CNN reported, in July 2020, Kassidy's dreams of becoming a real estate appraiser came crashing down when her application was close to being rejected by Sherry Bren, the executive who was responsible for checking it. However, Kristi, who was then the governor of South Dakota, wasn't deterred by the impending rejection and met up with Bren to get to the bottom of things. 

According to the executive, she understandably felt pretty "intimidated" heading into their meeting. After their chat, Bren claimed that she had agreed to give Kassidy's application a third chance to rectify the errors present in it through a mentorship program, which wasn't a privilege normally extended to most people who didn't get it right after their first two attempts. However, a spokesperson for the Republican politician insisted that Kassidy didn't receive preferential treatment since another applicant had previously made use of a similar agreement. With all that said and done, Kassidy finally got her real estate appraisal license in November 2020. However, Kristi Noem's negative reputation led to her daughter losing her job, and she naturally had some thoughts about that. 

As Kristi Noem faced backlash over her daughter's preferential treatment scandal, she resigned from her job as a real estate appraiser. Writing in a letter to Marcia Hultman, from the South Dakota Department of Labor, in November 2021, Kassidy Noem-Peters detailed that the scandal had gravely impacted her, noting, "I'm angry and I can acknowledge that this has successfully destroyed my business," (via Dakota News Now). Then, the mother of Kristi Noem's granddaughter admitted that she felt as if all the blood, sweat, and tears she had poured into her job had been in vain. After explaining that she intended to end her business by the end of 2021, Kassidy wrote, "I know as the governor's daughter I am always going to be in the public eye. I can't stop these attacks, but I can choose whether to keep being hurt by the fall out." 

For her part, Kristi took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to share a since-deleted post arguing that she hadn't used her influence to give her daughter a leg up and that she had raised her three kids to stand on their own. In her Vanity Fair interview, Kassidy similarly maintained that the media had incorrectly reported that she received special treatment. In fact, she felt her famous last name was a liability to her career, not an asset, as everyone else also believed. Ultimately, Kassidy's hope was that people wouldn't just needlessly saddle her with the "nepo baby" nickname and instead recognize that she had built a career through her own hard work.