#nd-sen

[justinspoliticalcorner]

BREAKING: Heidi Heitkamp pulls off the upset in #NDSen

BREAKING: Heidi Heitkamp wins the #NDSen race over Rick Berg. #HeidiHeitkamp #RickBerg

— Justin Gibson (@JGibsonDem) November 7, 2012

[justinspoliticalcorner]

BISMARCK, N.D. -- Dwight Thompson is a solid conservative businessman who will be voting for a Republican for president and a Democrat for Senate.

He's a ticket-splitter, a rare political breed critical to Democratic Senate candidates in states like North Dakota, where Republican Mitt Romney is expected to easily win the presidential race while down-ballot contests remain stubbornly close.

North Dakota is enjoying an energy development boom and, unlike most of the rest of the nation, its economy is robust. Unemployment is 3 percent, the lowest of any state in the nation. The Senate race here largely has come down to the personalities of Democrat Heidi Heitkamp and Republican Rep. Rick Berg.

Thompson, 57, of Grand Forks, sees no contradiction in his decision. For him, it's about familiarity.

"There's just a kind of feistiness about (Heitkamp). I think that draws people to her," said Thompson, the chief financial officer of Altru Health System. "It's more for Heidi than against Berg."

Less than three weeks from Election Day, the North Dakota Senate race looms large in the broader race for control of the Senate.

Republicans need to gain four seats to take control of the Senate if President Barack Obama is re-elected, three if Mitt Romney wins the White House. That's because the vice president, who also serves as president of the Senate, has a vote in case of a tie.

The GOP task of gaining four has become increasingly difficult because of candidates like Heitkamp in races the GOP had once considered plum pickup opportunities.

Republicans romped in North Dakota in 2010. Berg took the state's lone seat in the House away from a Democrat as GOP Gov. John Hoeven easily won a Senate seat formerly in Democratic hands. Afterward, four-term Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad decided against running again.

Voters like Thompson have long since made up their minds about the presidential race. Romney, like every Republican presidential candidate in the state since 1964, is expected to win in a waltz.

But the contest between Berg and Heitkamp has remained close. A recent Mason-Dixon poll of the state conducted for Valley News Live had the two candidates tied at 47 percent each. The same poll showed Romney easily beating Obama and Republican Kevin Cramer comfortably ahead of his Democratic challenger, Pam Gulleson, in the race for Berg's House seat.

Ticket-splitting has a long history in North Dakota. Until 2010, the state's congressional delegation had been entirely Democratic since 1986, even as the state regularly voted for the GOP presidential ticket.

Republicans had hoped that the Senate race would be over by now, that Romney voters intrigued by Heitkamp would settle in with Berg. The first-term congressman's case to voters has been similar to Romney's: a healthy emphasis on the national debt, a dismissal of Obama's policies and the promise that he can bring his skills as a businessman to the Senate.

H/T: Huffington Post

[justinspoliticalcorner]

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is under attack from North Dakota Democrats after criticizing talk show host Joel Heitkamp, the brother of Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Heidi Heitkamp, during a rally Saturday in Fargo.

Christie was campaigning on behalf of Rep. Rick Berg (R-N.D.), who is challenging Heidi Heitkamp for the state's open Senate seat. Christie was told that Joel Heitkamp, a former state senator, had said negative things about him on his statewide political talk show.

“First of all, Joel, if you’re watching, I don’t give a damn what you think of me," theFargo Forum reported Christie as saying.

Christie's comments drew quick criticism from Joel Heitkamp, who told the Associated Press he wasn't surprised that Christie had targeted him.

"I don't know if he's been going to Dale Carnegie classes, but after that flop at the Republican convention, I'm sure he has been working on his speeches," Heitkamp said. "What a better way to recover from that than to go after the No. 1 talk show host in the region."

"Rep. Berg is looking to change the direction of his campaign and recruited a Governor who came into North Dakota and attacked the Heitkamp family because he can't defend Rep. Berg's record of voting the party line to cut $180 billion from farm programs and allowing the Farm Bill to expire," Heitkamp campaign manager Tessa Gould said in a statement.

Heitkamp and Berg have been locked in one of the most competitive Senate races nationally, with polls showing the Democrat opening a narrow lead in recent weeks.

Berg has been backed by American Crossroads, Karl Rove's super PAC, while the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has aired several ads on Heitkamp's behalf.

The criticism of Christie's appearance in North Dakota comes as New Jersey Democrats have been attacking the governor for his out-of-state travel on behalf of Republican candidates across the country, saying he is setting himself up for a 2016 presidential campaign.

h/t: John Celock at HuffPo

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Things are looking better and better for Democrats in the battle for Senate control.

In some of the cycle’s closest contests — Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Virginia — Democrats are starting to eke out legitimate leads.

“Democratic campaigns are cautiously optimistic,” said DSCC spokesman Matt Canter. “We’re seeing movement in all the races toward the Democrats.”

Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren now leads Republican Sen. Scott Brown 47.5 percent to 45.6 percent, according to the PollTracker Average. In Wisconsin, Rep. Tammy Baldwin has jumped to a lead over former Gov. Thompson Thompson, 49 percent to 43.9 percent. And in Virginia, Tim Kaine leads George Allen, 48.1 percent to 45.2 percent.

Warren has benefited from her platform at the Democratic National Convention. The continued nationalization of the race has also played in her favor — despite Brown’s personal popularity, he is still a Republican in a state that President Obama will likely carry by a very wide margin.

Kaine’s race, too, has been tied closely to the presidential race — and in fact, Obama is pulling away from Romney in Virginia.

In Wisconsin, Baldwin has also been bolstered by her speech in Charlotte. But beyond that, she has campaigned heavily throughout the state, while Thompson has had to rebuild his campaign after spending heavily on a closely fought primary. It has also been 14 years since Thompson actually ran for office in the state, and Democrats have been attacking him as a D.C. insider for all the time he has spent in Washington since then.

The Thompson campaign has also had its share of missteps — most notably when a top staffer attacked Baldwin’s sexual orientation, for which Thompson publicly apologized several days later.

The Cook Report and other election watchers have recently conceded that Democrats have a slightly better chance of holding the Senate than Republicans do of taking it.

Part of the momentum shift can be chalked up to Rep. Todd Akin in Missouri. Akin’s Democratic opponent, Sen. Claire McCaskill, was long believed to be the most vulnerable senator in the country. But Akin’s false comment about women’s bodies being able to prevent pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape” — and his subsequent refusal to leave the race in the face of his party’s pleas — has fundamentally changed that race.

With Missouri likely out of play, the GOP must instead look to three other Democratic-held states as their must-win baseline. It starts with the open seat in Nebraska, where GOP state Sen. Deb Fisher is on track to defeat former Sen. Bob Kerrey. The races in Montana, where Democratic Sen. Jon Tester is in a tight battle with Rep. Denny Rehberg, and North Dakota, where Republican Rep. Rick Berg is facing Democratic former state Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp, are closer.

h/t: Eric Kleefeld at TPM

[sarahlee310-blog]

Rep. Rick Berg (R-ND), the candidate for Senate from North Dakota, once voted for a bill that would have made any woman who obtained an abortion guilty of a homicide crime — even if it were in the case of rape or incest. Indeed, the bill Berg supported does not even contain an explicit exception if an abortion is necessary to save the woman’s life.

[...]

Berg was quick to denounce the comments of a fellow Senate Candidate, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), when he claimed that a woman couldn’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape.” Berg called the statement “insulting and reprehensible,” and “condemn[ed] them in the strongest terms possible.” But the assertion that a rape victim should be put in jail for not wanting to carry the child of her rapist is equally abhorrent. It is also largely unpopular — though the country is often split on abortion rights, 75 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in the case of rape or incest.