Heidi Heitkamp Forgets To Mention That She’s A Democrat Again
Back in March I wrote about reports that Heidi Heitkamp was filming new ads. I had thought they were set to run during the state convention, it turns out the Heitkamp campaign just released the ads today.
They show Heidi touting North Dakota’s energy industry and blaming “gridlock” in Washington DC for hurting that industry. The message? Electing Heidi Heitkamp would end gridlock. Here’s the ad:
The problem with Heidi’s message is that we’re supposed to believe that giving Democrats a larger majority, we’re supposed to believe that keeping the Senate under the leadership of Majority Leader Harry Reid, would help North Dakota’s energy industry.
But North Dakota energy is all about oil and coal. Even if we suppose that Heitkamp personally isn’t hostile to those industries, her party (up to and including the President she says she’ll vote for again in 2012) is extremely hostile to oil and coal. President Obama famously told an interviewer in San Francisco that his policies would bankrupt the coal industry. Reid has said that oil and coal “make us sick.”
A vote for Heitkamp would be a vote for giving those guys more power. No wonder Heitkamp doesn’t like to highlight her party affiliation.
By the way, according to the 2011 annual report from Basin Electric (Heitkamp serves on their board as part of her participation with Dakota Gasification) “regulatory uncertainty,” particular in the form of the federal government taking over regulatory control over energy from the states, remains their chief concern.
Yet Heitkamp is campaigning on creating a “national energy policy.” What can that mean other than more decisions made in Washington DC and fewer decisions made in North Dakota?
Heitkamp wants to define herself as something different than other candidates in her party. She wants to be seen as pro-oil and pro-coal, and yet electing her would give more momentum to those who have the demise of oil and coal as their agenda.
No thanks.
Tags: basin electric, coal, dakota gasification, energy, Heidi Heitkamp, North Dakota News, oil
