Watching Government: North Dakota’s lively battle

Aug. 21, 2018
With this year’s midterm elections less than 3 months away, races for US Senate seats have heated up. A pretty good contest is under way in North Dakota, where Republican Kevin Cramer, the state’s lone House member, is trying to unseat Democrat Heidi Heitkamp.

With this year’s midterm elections less than 3 months away, races for US Senate seats have heated up. A pretty good contest is under way in North Dakota, where Republican Kevin Cramer, the state’s lone House member, is trying to unseat Democrat Heidi Heitkamp.

Cramer started with an advantage most House members trying to make the electoral jump to the Senate don’t have, since he’s had to serve a statewide constituency in his two terms. He sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee, where he’s on the Energy, Environment, and Communications and Technology Subcommittees.

At his Senate campaign web site, Cramer expresses support for an all-of-the-above energy strategy. “God has blessed North Dakota with a wealth of natural resources, many of which power the region’s way of life. Whether it’s coal, oil, natural gas, and even wind, we have helped spur the meteoric rise of our country into an energy superpower,” he says.

“I will continue to stand in support of all of these industries and will fight to prevent out-of-control federal bureaucrats from creating regulatory roadblocks that cost jobs and deter investment as they work to hamper our energy sector,” Cramer states. US President Donald Trump also has visited the state to campaign for the House member, and expressed his support in a recent ad.

Meanwhile, in her reelection campaign, Heitkamp also emphasizes an all-of-the-above energy strategy for which she says North Dakota has become a national model. She says she worked across the aisle to negotiate and help pass legislation to end the country’s 40-year ban on crude oil exports.

Heitkamp also says she helped bring other Democrats on board to help push for the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline’s construction, while fighting for federal tax incentives for wind and other alternative energy production.

Speaks up for corn growers

Heitkamp’s seat on the Senate Agriculture Committee also has put her in a position to join Iowa’s two GOP senators, Charles E. Grassley and Jodi Ernst, in speaking up for farmers who supply corn for ethanol.

When China announced tariffs on $60-billion worth of products critical to North Dakota’s energy economy on Aug. 8, however, Heitkamp’s campaign blasted Cramer for continuing to support a Trump administration trade war that the campaign said could blunt the important progress the state’s energy economy has made.

Like many energy state Democrats, Heitkamp has worked to put distance between herself and more-strident party members in the Senate from California, Massachusetts, and Florida who have become oil and gas industry opponents.

She will be hard to beat, but Cramer is trying nevertheless in a state where voters strongly backed Trump’s presidential bid in 2016.