Heidi Heitkamp Is Campaigning For Obamacare Mandate Outside Of North Dakota

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Written By:
Rob Port

Mar 2, 2012
10:06am

Here in North Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp won’t talk about Obamacare. Not even the controversial contraceptive mandate that is part of Obamacare and has been making headlines in recent weeks. She’s not talking to the media about the issue (nor is the state’s lap dog media asking). It’s not mentioned on her campaign website or in any of her campaign literature.

Heitkamp is making it very clear that she doesn’t want Obamacare, or even the contraceptive issue that Democrats are so sure will be a winner for them in 2012, to be a part of her campaign. Here in North Dakota any way. Outside of North Dakota, Heitkamp is starring in an ad about the supposed Republican “war on women”, and is joining a tour of liberal Democrat women in a tour of western urban centers in support of Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate.

resh from the Senate’s rejection of a GOP-led measure to roll back new rules on contraceptive coverage, the historic number of Democratic women running for U.S. Senate will take a victory lap with a Western states fundraising swing.

The tour will bring almost all of the 11 Democratic female candidates — six incumbent senators and five challengers — for stops in Los Angeles, Seattle and Denver, including one hosted by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple’s Steve Jobs, in San Francisco. The women have also released a new video making their case.

“If you don’t like what Republicans are doing, send a woman to the Senate,” says a online ad featuring the 11 women. “In fact, send them all.” …

Democratic challengers Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin, Shelley Berkley in Nevada, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota and Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts are expected to join the tour, along with the six incumbent senators up for reelection.

Maybe Heitkamp is relying on the uninquisitive, deferential (to Democrats, anyway) North Dakota media to keep news of this disconnect between her North Dakota campaign and her national campaign from North Dakota voters. But that was Earl Pomeroy’s strategy too. He hoped that he’d be able to skate past his support for Obamacare to win re-election anyway.

He ultimately lost by ten points.

Inside North Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp is campaigning like a moderate Republican. She talks of ending the partisan bickering in Washington DC. Outside of North Dakota, she’s talking about a “Republican war on women” and is a staunch advocate for even the most unpopular aspects of Obamacare, which the people she would represent in the Senate oppose in overwhelming majorities.