Heidi Heitkamp Announces Re-Election Campaign Everyone Already Knew About

Senator Heidi Heitkamp has already raised millions upon millions of dollars in the 2018 election cycle (mostly from out-of-state contributors), so of course she’s running for re-election.

It was disingenuous to the point of being an insult to the intelligence of voters for Heitkamp to ever pretend as though she might not run for re-election.

Anyway, North Dakota’s junior Senator appeared on her brother’s talk radio show today to drop the big news.

Meaning this “scoop” was probably more about fluffing Joel Heitkamp’s radio ratings than telling the public anything they didn’t already know about Heidi Heitkamp.

I mean, when the ratings trend for your radio station look like this…

…you need all the help you can get.

What you’re looking at is a 45 percent decline in KFGO’s ratings share for the over-twelve-years-old audience from the Spring 2012 ratings period through Spring 2017.

Given that KFGO, which is managed by Joel Heitkamp in addition to serving as the flagship for his talk show, served as Heidi Heitkamp’s personal propaganda outlet in the 2012 election you wonder what that might mean for 2018 outcomes.

Heitkamp’s margin of victory in 2012 wasn’t very large, remember. If KFGO’s decline in audience means fewer Heitkamp voters at the polls in November of next year it could mean that North Dakota Democrats lose control of their last statewide office.

UPDATE: Here’s Heitkamp’s official announcement, posted on Twitter:

You have to admire the linguistic parsing when she refers to her more than 500 “public events.” She’s obviously tying to make it sound like she’s very accessible to the public, but go get that number she has to be counting every ribbon-cutting and other ceremony most of which aren’t situations where the public can approach and question the Senator.