Posted on 01/31/2004 4:37:58 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Al Gore made just one stop in North Dakota in the entire 2000 presidential race. His jet touched down in Grand Forks, refueled, took on some pizzas and left. No one even knew he had been there. "Well, I guess the guys who refueled the plane knew, and the guy who delivered the pizzas," said Vern Thompson, executive director of the state Democratic Party. "But no one else." Brief as it was, the Gore stop was the only time people here could point to any visit whatsoever by a Democratic presidential candidate — until North Dakota scheduled its Democratic caucus for Tuesday. Since then three candidates have paid brief visits and a fourth is on his way. People in South Carolina or Arizona, who are also voting on Tuesday, would be peeved at the minuscule level of attention that North Dakota has received this year, but not North Dakotans. They are pumped. "We are pretty excited," said Dave Blair, 47, a sales representative for a printing company in Bismarck. "We're finally being recognized as part of the 50 United States, that we do exist and that there are people who live here." For decades, North Dakota held its presidential primaries in June, when the horrid winters of the Upper Plains had receded enough to entice residents outdoors. But by June, most nomination races were over. So in 2000, to generate attention, the Legislature switched from state-sponsored primaries to party-sponsored caucuses and shifted them to late March. It did not work. By March, Mr. Gore had locked up the 2000 nomination, leading to a caucus flop — only about 2,000 people, statewide, from a pool of more than 420,000 eligible voters, took part. Party officials decided to go for broke this year and ignore the weather, moving the caucuses up to Feb. 3. They have been mighty pleased with the results. Howard Dean visited the state twice, once for a party fund-raiser in Grand Forks a year ago and again for a rally in early January in Fargo that drew more than 900 people, the largest crowd people could remember for a Democratic event here. Gen. Wesley K. Clark came twice, too, once to Fargo, where he unveiled his national agriculture plan in November, and then again to the state party's Jan. 10 Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner in Bismarck, where he was the keynote speaker, attracting 800 people. Even Representative Dennis J. Kucinich made a short trip to Fargo. And on Sunday, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts plans to speak at a rally in Fargo. A poll on Friday in The Fargo Forum, the state's largest newspaper, affords the only hint at voters' views. Conducted by the Public Affairs Institute at Minnesota State University, the poll questioned 641 likely Democratic voters and found that Mr. Kerry had more than twice the support (31 percent) of his nearest rival (Mr. Clark at 15 percent). Dr. Dean and Mr. Edwards each had 7 percent, and the three other candidates were at 1 percent or below. The poll's margin of sampling error was four percentage points. Still, rival campaigns emphasized the poll also showed 40 percent still undecided. But half of those undecided said they were leaning toward Mr. Kerry, compared with only 26 percent leaning to Mr. Clark, 13 percent to Mr. Edwards, who has mounted virtually no effort at all in North Dakota, and 10 percent to Dr. Dean. The state has 22 Democratic delegates, and 14 will be divided among those candidates who get at least 15 percent of the vote. Compared with other states casting ballots on Tuesday, the level of visible political activity remains low in North Dakota. When the Dean campaign realized last week that it had pretty much depleted its vaunted bucket of Internet money, one of the consequences was the cancellation of plans for television commercials in the state. That left only two candidates on the air, Mr. Clark, who has been running commercials for several weeks, and Mr. Kerry, who began this week. The Dean campaign has tried to capitalize on its large number of young volunteers by staging "visibility events." For example, several of them stood on a busy Fargo highway overpass waving Dean signs one afternoon. No one is running radio commercials or buying billboards, said Berrett Gall, who runs the Dean effort in Fargo. The ground is frozen, making the planting of lawn signs difficult. Below-zero temperatures have also dampened door-to-door efforts and leaflet drops. So far, only the Clark team has sent mailings. Still, residents report a greater level of interest than in any recent race. "There are definitely a lot more political discussions these days," said Tracy Potter, 53, executive director of the Fort Abraham Lincoln Foundation, which raises money for the renovation of the fort from which Custer led his Seventh Cavalry to massacre in 1876. "I was asked just last night who I was supporting," he added. Mr. Potter said he thought he would go with Mr. Kucinich, though he said he was also attracted to the upbeat message of Mr. Edwards, who he thinks stands a better chance of unseating President Bush. As in Iowa, New Hampshire and the other states voting on Tuesday, electability seems to be the major issue. "We're all members of the A.B.B. Club here," said State Senator Carolyn Nelson. "Anybody but Bush." What makes the North Dakota race so difficult to gauge is the odd nature of the event. The state is the only one with no voter registration, and people can simply turn up with identification on Tuesday, sign a paper saying they have voted Democratic or plan to next year, and they are eligible. And is it a caucus or a primary? Instead of voting sites in every tiny hamlet, as in a primary, there will be just 96 caucus sites spread across the state's 70,704 square miles — 30 percent larger than New York. But voters can show up anytime from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., peruse the campaign literature on display and cast a secret ballot. "I don't know, is that a caucus?" asked John Marshall, state director for the Clark campaign. "That's what they call it, so that's what we call it." Campaign officials admit that they have no idea how many people will turn up on Tuesday. About a third of the state's population is spread along the Red River Valley from Fargo to Grand Forks, with other clusters in Bismarck and Minot. The rest are in rural communities across the frozen plains, or on the state's vast American Indian reservations, which tend to go Democratic. Although its Congressional delegation of three is Democratic, North Dakota remains a predominantly Republican state. "People here send Democrats to Washington to make sure the money comes back to the state," Mr. Thompson said, "and then want Republicans to manage it once it's back here." For Mr. Thompson, the higher level of interest in this year's caucuses has a particularly personal resonance. In 2000, the year of Mr. Gore's pizza stop, he was one of several Democratic candidates who lost badly to a huge Republican tide. "It was a massacre," he said. So a higher level of interest in a presidential year might help rebuild the Democratic Party. It would not be bad for the national party, either, Mr. Thompson said. "I've said from the beginning that injecting some Upper Midwest values into the race will only make the party stronger," he said. "We have the largest per capita number of veterans of any state, and people here are deeply interested in education and in agriculture. Whoever gets the nomination needs to hear some of that before they go out against the Republicans."
It's pretty hard to have lawn signs without lawns?
Even the state's Democrats admit that they'd rather have Republicans managing the people's money! ROFLOL! Now THAT's funny! Thanks for posting this. On a related note, somebody emailed me yesterday or today that the state's attorney general has ruled that Weasley Clark's telemarketing calls violated the state's law against recorded messages. In ND, political calls are not exempted from the do-not-call and no recorded call registry.
North Dakota has beautiful lawns, just not in February. There are, however, plenty of snowbanks in which to plant lawn signs.
Few people realize that North Dakota played a pivotal role in the 1976 Republican Primary-- and threw away an opportunity to spare the nation from four years of Jimmy Carter.
The delegate margin between President Ford and Ronald Reagan was razor thin. So thin, in fact, that Reagan came to North Dakota to campaign. Like a lot of other college students at that time, my friends and I were not sure whether we were Democrat or Republican or something else. But many of us were charmed by Reagan and the vision he had for the country.
We went to the Republican county convention to drum up support. This was the largest county in the state, but similar scenes were repeated throughout the state. The rank and file were overwhelmingly for Reagan. The party bosses (mostly country clubbers led by an M.D. name C. Warner Litten from our county) were for Ford.
The Litten-led "compromise" to thumb their nose at the rank and file and take North Dakota out of the decision making process was to split the delegation at 9 for Ford, 9 for Reagan and then have the gall to tell the overwhelming majority that under the rules, the party leadership could have awarded all delegates to Ford.
Litten's action effectivelty stopped Reagan's momentum in June 1976. Our governor then was a Democrat from the western part of the state named Art Link, one of the most honest, decent and moral politicians I have ever known. Supporting his re-election was far more attractive to most of us than lining up behind an appointed president who had few policy differences from Jimmy Carter.
More than anything, it was the Country Clubbers slap to the rank and file who sent so many of us over to the other side of the aisle and eventually led to a North Dakota congressional delegation of Democrats only.
Why do you think North Dakota might go for the DemocRAT especially if it's Kerry?
That's just pure BS. Ask any cheesehead how to plant a yard sign in the frozen tundra. We know how to do it.
(Hint) You start with a cordless drill and a long bit -- or a steel spike and a 4 pound hammer...
Take a perfectly good state 'not' on the map, add a bunch of national politicians....
What do you get?
The Country Club Republicans who ran the party in my day never put up serious challenges to the lesser offices with a determined full-time campaigner like PC&D. Fortunately, their grip on the party machinery has been loosened even as the Democrat party has tilted futher to the left as it has nationally. Sand is going to have a tough fight unless North Dakota has changed a lot since I left. The mentality is to keep re-electing incumbents and build seniority until and unless they do something totally stupid. However, in a landslide year (Reagan 1980), even popular incumbents down ticket can be beaten. Pomeroy is probably the least entrenched of the three, so may be Sand's best shot.
[Shakes Head]
Bush: 60.66%
Gore: 33.06%
Bob Dole won this state by 7% in 1996 with Perot atracting 12% of the vote.
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