On What Planet Has Heidi Heitkamp Been Running A Positive Campaign?

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Written By:
Rob Port

Sep 30, 2012
3:11pm

In a poll paid for by Democrats, which questioned a sample of North Dakotans provided to the pollster by the Democrats, and which not at all suspiciously upheld every single Democrat talking point about the state’s Senate race, this may stand out as the most outrageously inaccurate finding:

More poll respondents thought Berg was running the more negative campaign between the two than thought Heitkamp was the more negative. Forty-six percent, regardless of whom they support in the Senate race, said Berg is running the more negative campaign, while 24 percent said Heitkamp was more negative.

You’ve got to be kidding me. Remember, this poll was taken after the Heitkamp campaign spent weeks tarring and feathering Berg’s business track record. The campaign all but called Berg a slum lord in their official releases, and unofficially plenty of Democrats in the state actually did use that term.

Heitkamp has run one of the ugliest campaigns this state has ever seen. While the Berg campaign has certainly matched Heitkamp in volume of political communication, he’s focused on very real and problematic aspects of Heitkamp’s political career. Her past support for Obamacare. Her past and enthusiastic support for President Obama. The big money her campaign has received from an environmental law firm engaged in anti-fracking activism, not to mention the money her campaign has received from the law firm of a man Heitkamp once appointed to the lucrative position of representing North Dakota in the tobacco lawsuits, something for which he continues to make millions on to this day.

These are accurate characterizations of real events in Heitkamp’s past, yet we’re to believe that Berg running a “negative” campaign for bringing them up? And that Heitkamp is not running a negative campaign by all but calling Berg a slum lord?

That’s a level of hypocrisy that will be hard for most to swallow.