Democrat Governor Candidate Ryan Taylor Cranks Up The Class Warfare In Accepting Nomination
Back when it was first being rumored that state Senate Minority Leader Ryan Taylor was considering a run for governor I went back and re-read some of his writings for Ag Week and other publications. What I found was surprising. Despite the folksy, down-home, “aw shucks” persona he likes to adopt Taylor was prone to espousing the sort of class war staples that you’d expect to hear out of a Berkeley professor.
Speaking at his party’s statewide convention today, Taylor didn’t change his tune much:
GRAND FORKS, N.D. — North Dakota Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ryan Taylor said Friday his campaign would try to end a GOP stranglehold on the top elected offices, calling Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple part of a “small ruling class” beholden to wealthy campaign donors. …
Speaking to hundreds of cheering state Democratic convention delegates shortly after they endorsed his candidacy, Taylor said his race against Dalrymple would give North Dakotans “our chance, at this special time, to elect a people’s governor.”
Taylor, a rancher who wore a white cowboy hat during his speech, described himself as someone who “comes from the grass-roots, who saddles his own horse and pitches his own hay.” …
Taylor called Dalrymple “part of a small ruling class” that has had “the money and interest flow in.”
“We will not sell out our quality of life for campaign contributions,” Taylor said. “With me as governor, North Dakota will not be for sale, because I am not for sale, and I am beholden to no person and no network of country-club cronies.”
I’ll admit that I’ve had my problems with the Hoeven/Dalrymple administration in the past. I don’t like that Governor Dalrymple has outsourced his economic policy to the North Dakota Chamber of Commerce. I don’t like that that the Dalrymple/Hoeven approach to economic policy seems to be government handing out special favors to specific people businesses rather than lowering tax and regulatory burdens for all citizens.
Republicans aren’t supposed to be for picking and choosing winners in the free market.
That being said it seems as though Taylor, confronted with Dalrymple’s left-of-center politics, has chosen to try and contrast himself with Dalrymple by going even further left.
That’s not likely to get him elected.
It seems the choice North Dakotans have to make for governor this year is between a moderate Democrat and a cowboy-hate-wearing prairie socialist.
Tags: class warfare, election 2012, jack dalrymple, North Dakota News, ryan taylor
