North Dakota’s Out Of State Money Problem

“Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I’ve come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”
That’s always been one of my favorite Ronald Reagan quotes. It illustrates the true nature of politics. It’s all about money, and what politicians are willing to do for it.
As cynical as this may sound, money plays a big part in winning elections. Billboards, television ads, radio ads, flyers, pamphlets, yard signs, button,s t-shirts, consultants, pollsters, staffers, press conferences and rallies. These are the tools politicians use to get themselves elected, and they cost a lot of money. In fact, it’s not at all unusual to see a campaign spend millions of dollars to get a person elected to a job that pays just a few hundred thousand dollars a year.
The point here is that often the amount of money a candidate is able to spend on a campaign determines who the winner of an election is. Not always, of course, but often.
If it didn’t we wouldn’t see hundreds of millions of dollars spent on campaigning during elections.
Here in North Dakota, though, politics aren’t as much of a “big money” enterprise as the rest of the country. Most of our political leaders are “citizen politicians.” North Dakota is a small state, and our political arena is small as well. Our politicians are regular people. The state legislature is only in session every two years, and all of our legislators have a “day job” which pays the bills.
Our politicians are regular people, and our political scene has never been one that included a lot of money. Until the last several years that is.