National Democrats Abandoning ND House Candidate Pam Gulleson

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Written By:
Rob Port

Sep 26, 2012
10:09pm

According to reports, the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee is pulling resources they had committed to supporting House candidate Pam Gulleson and re-allocating them to other races.

Needless to say, this is hardly a vote of confidence in Gulleson’s candidacy. It would be fair to say, though Democrats obviously aren’t just going to say it, that Gulleson is being written off. It’s a testament to the strong, savvy campaign run by her opponent Kevin Cramer (and a thorough rebuttal to those who claimed that Cramer’s decision to skip his party’s nominating convention would leave the eventual GOP candidate weakened).

This doesn’t speak well for Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp’s campaign either, frankly. I wrote previously about the implications North Dakota’s apparently lopsided House race have for the Senate race. National Democrats abandoning Gulleson leaves Heitkamp as the only real shot North Dakota liberals have for winning on the statewide ballot.

While North Dakotans have a long history of splitting the ballot, it seems very unlikely that Heitkamp is going to outperform every other Democrat on the ballot – including Gulleson and President Barack Obama – to an extent that will have her finishing in front of Berg. Especially when Gulleson has been campaigning on many of the same talking points and issues that Heitkamp has.