Oh, Stephanie Strong, where have gone? What could you have done?
At the North Dakota Republican spring convention (perhaps you remember Kristi Noem's speech there? No? That's o.k.: neither do North Dakota Republicans), the party leadership told its members to vote for Brian Kalk for their lone U.S. House seat. Kalk got the endorsement of Noem's northerly opposite number, Rep. Rick Berg, who's running for Senate.
But in yesterday's primary, 54% of North Dakota Republicans said no, they want Kevin Cramer. Kevin Cramer was the cranky conservative favorite, winning endorsements from Teabagging outfits like FreedomWorks, the Club for Growth, the Eagle Forum, and the Family and Marriage PAC. Kalk did not have the same Tea Party cred. Blogger Rob Port alleges Kalk considered running for governor as a Democrat in 2004.
Here in South Dakota, the GOP's gal Kristi Noem went unchallenged in the primary, because Stephanie Strong doesn't know how to fill out petitions or answer her phone. We've seen Noem speciously evade the Tea Party label. We've seen GOP primary voters thumb their noses at her and other party leaders. And lest you think that Strong was just too crazy to stand a chance against Noem, remember that the poster child of conservative craziness, Rep. Lora Hubbel, made mostly rational Senator Deb Peters sweat her primary and came really close to winning.
There's strong dissatisfaction with the GOP establishment on both sides of the Dakota border. Cramer capitalized on it and gets a shot at the big House. Strong woulda and coulda... if not shoulda.
Noem, House women haters continue to deny full health care to female veterans:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/shaheen-amendment-military-rape-abortion
Kalk actually walked out of the NDGOP convention with a very decent plurality of support, and Kalk technically beat the establishment guy for the convention nod (Shane Goettle). So it wasn't like Kalk was the blessed child of the higher ups. That might have actually been part of the problem.
Cramer, on the other hand, skipped the convention entirely thinking he didn't stand a chance (Cramer lost in the general election for that House seat. Twice.), but he knew how to push Tea Party buttons and did just that and won.
Cramer's pretty intelligent and rational (met him a few times including once when I was in high school). Has a history of losing though. Hopefully this bodes well for Pam Gulleson.
Rick Berg waxed the Tea Party guy in the GOP primary for the US Senate. Jack Dalrymple had no difficulty at all with a TP challenge for governor. Cramer has been running for the seat for about six years, had the big money edge. Cramer a TP darling? Really? Depends on what event he's appearing in. I think the ND GOP 'establishment' is watching them with a gimlet eye.
Interesting! I'm glad to hear the local view. Perhaps the picture of Tea Party success in ND was as cloudy as it was here with both Gordon Howie and Dennis Daugaard seeing their endorsements go for naught?
ND also had roughly 170,000 people vote last night. Almost 100,000 people weighed in on Kalk-Kramer. It might have very well been name recognition.
The Tea Party in ND, I think, is far less cloudy, than in SD. Seems like they have to run under the radar to be competitive - and there were a couple of state legislative race where they were. The signature statewide issue - abolishment of property taxes went down in flames. Do you see a competitive TP candidate for statewide office in SD in the near term?
I think Chris E. is spot on. Cramer dominated the airwaves.
Competitive TP in SD? Not likely, not when the best they can get to make noise are folks like Howie, who shall always patrol the fringe, and Strong, who flunked basic petition law. One would think the TP could do better here, since we're more conservative than ND.
And 100,000 voters in the Kalk-Kramer race? Wow! Barth-Varilek drew 30,000 voters. Did the ballot measures drive up ND's turnout?
Absolutely, especially the Fighting Sioux issue.
Of course, North Dakota has that provision placing ballot issues on the primary ballot instead of waiting for the general election. That's an interesting way to drive voter turnout. Does having ballot measures on the primary ballot benefit one party over the other?
I don't really know, Cory. I think that's fairly fluid, depending on the cycle and the issue. This year, I believe, the voters, in an empatic and bipartisan way, wanted to protect the University of North Dakota from further sanctions. Two of three other ballot measures (killing property taxes, and added protection for religious freedom) also generated voter interest.
That's a harder question to gauge because Ref 4 (the Fighting Sioux one) is pretty non-partisan. The far left were for retiring the name due to the racist argument. The far right were against retiring the name to prove the point to the NCAA. Anything in between was pretty unpredictable until last night, but that was under the safety blanket of a private vote. You would do well to not mention this controversy if you're within radius of Grand Forks or a UND alum without decent assurance you won't get mobbed. It's that serious here.
Even within the Dem-NPL, you will draw a mix of boos and cheers regardless of your viewpoint.
I don't count Measure 1 because it was dry and most voters seemed to pick "Yes" on instinct. The correct answer was "No" because it could potentially allow a lot of silliness on part of the legislators and doing things on the side, but it's not going to be the end of the world either.
Measure 2 and 3...also hard to gauge who it would benefit because they were so extreme. 2 would have made ND the first state to abolish property taxes (and would radically rescript how local services and schools are funded). 3 would have theoretically allowed people to beat their wives under strongly held religious beliefs or force state prosecutors to defend why they have a "compelling interest" to stop the beatings. 3 was also sponsored heavily by the Catholic bishops in ND as a vehicle to challenge the Health Care Act.
The two acts rallied progressives and Tea Partiers alike. I guess there's technically more TP people in ND, so if you were looking for a benefit, they'd get it.
But it also woke up the electorate in ND that's adverse to radical change. 2 was blown out of the water 76-23. 3, which would read to uninformed voters as "More Liberty! This is good!" still died heavily 64-36. I know there was a good amount of advertising against both measures though.
That's interesting, Chris. Let me know if I'm looking at those results through too narrow a prism, but it seems to be that the default TP positions on the Fighting Sioux, the property tax repeal, and the religious freedom fakery all got beat yesterday, which along with the candidate results noted above, suggests that Cramer's victory really hinged more on other factors than Tea-flavored dissatisfaction. Did the money from FreedomWorks and Club for Growth have impact?
I'd agree with that. In my earlier thing when I mentioned "Tea Party buttons," I really meant the magic money that comes with being a Tea Party darling without serious conflict.
But one important thing I forgot to mention: Kalk's a pretty new guy to the scene without really important friends. Cramer was a very useful lackey for two very high profile kingmakers in ND politics over the past twenty years (Fmr. Govs Schaefer and Hoeven who both went on to be Sec. of Agriculture under W. Bush and Senator respectively).
It's hard to distinguish which factor played a bigger part in leaving Kalk, a new moderate guy to the scene without money to compensate out to dry, but both things meant money and power for Cramer. It takes something really special to beat out that, and Kalk apparently didn't have that this go around.
But Kalk's got savvy and charisma - it's how he won the convention nomination. Even I think he's a pretty cool guy. He has potential to make a comeback.
That, by the way, is why Shane Goettle was the establishment choice at the convention. Though most of the delegates in the NDGOP had no clue who he was before this year, he worked for Hoeven's machine and had his blessing.
Noem picked the wrong candidate again. Really makes you wonder if the TP effect in '14 will topple Rounds and Noem?
"Seems like they have to run under the radar to be competitive"
That is due to the anti-conservative bigotry in the media. The TP was created in reaction to Obama. The GOP Establishment wants a Republican Obama (Romney). When is the conservative base going to become totally feed up with the GOP, and when will the Dems, who complain about crony capitalism, come to understand that the TP has the solution to that problem?
Steve: No doubt what you're describing as the "conservative base" is frustrated with a lot things, including, perhaps, the strategic direction of the Republican Party. I'm just not sure whether we can agree on what "conservative" is, if you're calling Romney a "Republican Obama," or what a "base" is, given that Romney has captured the nomination. Do you think the TP might be more viable as a separate political party? As to the "anti-conservative bigotry in the media" - you're aware, I'm sure, of the existence of media organizations such as Fox News, Wall Street Journal, AM Radio Talk Shows, the blogs? With the diversity and the different platforms for media, just how focused is their power to limit the TP?
The battle for the hearts and minds of the electorate has been and will continue to be in the middle. The middle course, the mainstream, the relatively middle-of-the-road Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated independents, will all cast their votes in good faith and from that, our political leadership will emerge. In the Dakotas --- the heartland, Middle America, good Democrats and good Republicans find away to get to a common ground. While there's a little rough and tumble, it's comparatively civil. This, after all, isn't San Francisco or Orange County. I suspect Troy Jones would Bill Fleming a beer as they disagree on politics.
It's been said the politics ain't beanbag, but I think we should all try to keep civil while we try to keep it real.
The baby boomers are beginning to retire now. "Middle of the road" will lean conservative until demographics once again favor younger voters, as they did in the 70s.