Say Anything Blog

Dakota Huseby writes this bit of snark about the NDGOP challengers to North Dakota's Democrat Senator and Representative who are up for re-election this year:

Challengers, not surprisingly, lag behind in money for the upcoming Senate and Congressional election--however, the numbers they have raised are so incredibly low, they'll be struggling for gas money to drive across the state.

I wish Dakota had looked a little deeper into the issue as there are some facts behind those fundraising figures that North Dakotans should be made aware of.

According to the Fargo Forum article Dakota links Senate Candidate Dwight Grotberg has raised $41,000 for his campaign thus far. Kent Conrad, also according to this article, has raised about $3.5 million for his campaign.

Quite the disparity, no? Yet if we look at who, exactly, is giving money to these candidates we see that about 94% of Conrad's millions are coming from out-of-state contributors. According to Open Secrets (the same source cited in the Forum article) Conrad has only raised $137,828 from North Dakotans. That's still three times as much as Grotberg, but we must also keep in mind that Grotberg only announced his candidacy and started raising funds for his campaign a few months ago.

Once you take Conrad's big-money, out-of-state patrons out of the mix and consider the fact that he's had longer to fund raise I really don't see all that much of a difference between the two with regard to monetary support from actual North Dakotans.

The same is true, to some extent, with the North Dakota House campaign. Again according to the Forum article NDGOP candidate Matt Mechtel has raised $37,000 for his campaign. His opponent, Rep. Earl Pomeroy, has raised about $1.2 million. Yet, again, if we look at in-state versus out-of-state donations we see that Pomeroy has only gotten about 28% of his money ($39,265) raised between May 25th and June 30th from North Dakotans.

Considering that Mechtel has only been fundraising for his campaign since April I don't see where Pomeroy has much of a fundraising advantage over him at all, barring big-money, out-of-state contributors of course. Pomeroy has only raised a little over $2,000 more than Mechtel from North Dakotans.

The Forum fails to mention these massive disparities between in-state and out-of-state contributions. That's unfortunate, because those are facts I think North Dakotans need to be aware of when they go to the polls.

If we look at these campaigns from the perspective of monetary given by actual North Dakotans to each candidate we can see that these races are much, much closer than some are willing to admit.