Heitkamp Campaign Has Spent Thousands On Out Of State Campaigning
Earlier this year when Democrat Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp announced her decision not to attend her party’s national convention a spokesman for her campaign said it was because she didn’t want to take time away from campaigning here in North Dakota.
“She decided it’s more important for her to be here in North Dakota and to be campaigning here and talking to the people of North Dakota than to be in Charlotte (N.C.) at that time,” spokesman Liam Forsythe said.
But the lure of big-money fundraisers outside of North Dakota apparently proved too much for Heitkamp to resist. According to data pulled from her most recent FEC disclosure report, Heitkamp spent a significant amount of time campaigning out of state in Arizona, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and West Virginia.
In total Heitkamp’s campaign paid out $11,511.01 in expenses for hotels, food, booze and other travel expenses in these locations between July and September, and possibly more. The campaign may not reimburse Heitkamp herself and other campaign staff for travel until after election day, something that would be reported on later disclosure reports.
The Heitkamp campaign is very dependent on out-of-state fundraising. The FEC hasn’t correlated her latest fundraising into spreadsheet form yet making analysis difficult, but through the last report in July Heitkamp had received more than 75% of her funding from out of state (Berg is at 65%) with places shown in these travel expense disclosures – DC, New York and San Francisco – showing up in her top five fundraising areas.
Here are the FEC disclosure entries for the out of state travel:
