Undercover Video: Heitkamp Staffer Says His Boss, Who Is Campaigning as a Moderate, Will Be “Super Liberal” After Election Day

Back in 2012 Democrat Heidi Heitkamp campaigned as a moderate. An “independent” as her campaign messaging told us. Someone who would eschew her national political party’s more liberal tendencies. Heitkamp even went so far as to skip her party’s national convention that cycle.

Once elected, however, Heitkamp voted with President Barack Obama and her fellow Senate Democrats well over 90 percent of the time according to vote tabulations compiled by Congressional Quarterly:

As you can see, since her first years in office Heitkamp has moved back toward the middle. This election year the Senator is once again laying claim to the title of moderate. She’s praised herself in campaign ads for voting more than half of the time with President Trump. Heck, she even put a self-described Trump voter in one of her TV ads.

But what if, should she be re-elected, she begins another six year term voting with Democrats most of the time again and breaking her campaign trail promise?

She will do just that. And that’s not me saying it. That’s Jesse Overton, the digital director of Heitkamp’s re-election campaign. He’s one of several Heitkamp staffers caught in undercover video saying their boss will be a lot more to the left than she’s campaigning:

“It’s an election year for her. She’s being careful about pissing people off, and … said basically like, after the election, if and when she gets re-elected, she’s going to be super liberal,” Overton says. He later adds that Heitkamp “probably won’t run for a third term.”

“If there’s a blue wave in November, I am sure that her voting record will shift a lot and will shift away from the President’s Campaign,” Prescott Robinson, a staff assistant on Heitkamp’s campaign, can be seen saying in the video.

Another staffer, Hallie Skripak-Gordon, can be seen on the video saying that the Heitkamp campaign took down an Obama poster “because the press was here.”

“So we take it down when the press comes,” she added.