Shot In The Dark: Conrad is the New Daschle?

March 18, 2005

Conrad is the New Daschle?

My home state of North Dakota is a strange one.

On the one hand, it's voted Republican pretty consistently since statehood. Its three electoral votes are among the safest known for any GOP nominee.

On the other hand, North Dakota has for the past twenty years elected some incongruously liberal congresspeople, including its two current senators, Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad.

Why? I have my theories; the Democrats bring in the pork on the farm bill, the one issue where the most rock-ribbed Republican farmers become socialists. And they are two of the most Senators in Washington today - giving North Dakota a measure of political clout that it is surely not used to.

The '06 election is going to be a crazy one back in NoDak; word has it that John Hoeven, the state's very popular governor, is going to take a whack at Kent Conrad's senate seat. The GOP nationally thinks Conrad is vulnerable; against Hoeven, he might be. It'll be interesting to watch; farmers, and the Farmer's Union, are pretty savvy about politics when it comes to knowing who'll put the pork on the table; all that seniority will be hard to part with. But if South Dakota could do it...

It'll be a fun election to watch.

Brenarlo, a fellow expat, writes Taking Back North Dakota, a blog I'll be following for the next couple of years.

Posted by Mitch at March 18, 2005 05:01 AM | TrackBack

Comments

Mitch-I too am a native North Dakotan. I owe my appointment to West Point to a slot from Quentin Burdick. Upon my return from service in Germany in 1979 I made an appointment at the Senate Office building to meet Sen Burdick. If he hadn't been wearing a tie I would have thought I was in the dementia unit of a nursing home. North Dakota has a long and weird record of reelecting incompetent liberals. Conrad and Dorgan are just the current poster boys.

Posted by: Grotmonster at March 18, 2005 09:34 AM

I'm not a native NoDak but I lived there for 23 years and worked in news, politics and PR, includng two years in D.C. as press secretary for Mark Andrews' last two years in the Senatelican (the last Republican ND sent to Washington).

Exactly right about why ND elects Dems to Congress.

Re: Grotmonster's comment, Conrad owes his continued Senate tenure to Burdick's (un)timely death. Conrad pledged in his initial senate campaign not to run for reelection if he could not solve the federal deficit problem, the promise of someone not expecting to win. But he did (win), he didn't (solve the deficit) and he kept his promise not to run for reelection.

That opened the door for Dorgan to run for the open Senate seat. Then, Burdick died, Conrad ran for that seat and was graciously (by the Senate leadership) restored to senior ND senator status based on his previous service, much to the chagrin of Dorgan, for whom Conrad had worked many years earlier.

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