In the wake of the outrage triggered by her campaign releasing the names of women who had allegedly been sexually assaulted without getting the women’s permission, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) was asked if she had suspended her campaign in order to deal with the fallout and investigate what had gone wrong. She answered, “I think I pretty much did; we pretty much went in full-on, let’s deal with this. So a number of campaign activities were canceled as a result of this.”
But according to North Dakota GOP Communication’s Director Jake Wilkins, some Pinocchios are in order for Heitkamp:
Heitkamp, the incumbent, is getting trampled in the polls by her opponent, Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-ND). A poll conducted between October 12-19 by KVLY, KFYR and Strategic Research Associates of 650 likely voters in North Dakota found Cramer leading Heitkamp 56%-40%. The poll found Heitkamp’s favorability rating had plunged to only 37%, with an unfavorable rating of 52%, which was up from 41% in September.
Last week, when the two candidates debated, Cramer blasted Heitkamp’s campaign for accusing him of giving himself a $23,000 raise while he was a member of the state’s Public Service Commission. Cramer fired, “You know that’s not true. You know that’s impossible. You know that’s against the rules.”
Heitkamp said, “You were elected with that salary; you should maintain that salary.”
Cramer noted that even leftist Politifact called the Heitkamp campaign’s claim false; he was supported by state budget director Joe Morrissette the day after the debate. Morrissette stated, “To the best of our knowledge, we are not aware of any time the PSC formally requested salary increases for members of the PSC as part of their budget request. That would be highly unusual for any agency head, even more so for elected officials, and I think we would have recalled it.”
In the debate, Cramer pulled no punches after Heitkamp accused him of being purely partisan. He asserted:
Senator Heitkamp keeps creating this illusion that somehow she’s bi-partisan, except on the things that really matter. She was with Barack Obama nearly 90% of the time. And then she’s proud of the fact that she’s been with President Trump about half of the time, maybe as much as 54% of the time. The problem is, you can be on both teams, you maybe feel good about it, but when one team is so much better for North Dakota than the other team, you don’t abandon that good team half of the time just to say that you’re only with them half of the time.
Donald Trump stands with North Dakota more often than Heidi Heitkamp stands with North Dakota. He supported tax cuts; he supported replacement of Obamacare; he supports cutting sanctuary city funding; he supports a strong military; he supports a strong vets; he supports rollback of regulations; he supports the Reins Act. He’s on the side of North Dakota. That’s what matters. It’s not how often you’re with this team or this team, or how often you’re with both teams; what matters is how often are you with the people of North Dakota.