Kylie Oversen, Tim Hoye Vying for Chair of North Dakota Democratic Party

According to multiple sources, attorney Kylie Oversen is throwing her hat in to lead the North Dakota Democratic Party.

Again.

Oversen was chair of the party previously from 2015 to 2018, stepping down in the middle of election season last year to focus on her unsuccessful bid for Tax Commissioner.

She hasn’t had a lot of success in politics. She did win election to the state House of Representatives in 2012, but ended up serving just one term. In the 2016 election she lost that seat. As past party chair, she presided over a conga line of failure.

She saw her party go from holding 15 seats in the state Senate and 23 in the state House in 2015 to just 9 and 13 seats, respectively, by the end of the 2016 election cycle. Democrats did add one seat in the Senate and and two in the House in the 2018 cycle which was finished by Oversen’s replacement Warren Larsen.

She is currently employed at the Schneider Law Firm alongside unsuccessful Democratic U.S. House candidate Mac Schneider. The firm was founded by Mac’s father, Mark Schneider, who was also a previous chairman of the North Dakota Democratic Party.

I reached out to Oversen via Facebook, but she hasn’t returned my message.

Tim Hoye is also in the mix for party chair. He ran unsuccessfully for the state legislature in the last cycle. He was a candidate for the House in District 45 in the Fargo/West Fargo area, losing to Republican incumbents Mary Johnson and Tom Kading.

Hoye works in IT. According to his LinkedIn profile, he currently runs or ran a consulting firm and a business called Dakota Cloud Marketing. He also works for my employer, Forum Communications, in IT.

Full disclosure, I interacted with him one time while getting my company laptop.

I spoke with Tim this morning. He confirmed that he is a candidate for chairman, but declined to discuss the matter further as he was traveling.

Democrats are meeting to reorganize their party in Bismarck today, with their annual Governor’s Dinner this evening (I’m not sure why it’s called that, Oversen was three years old the last time North Dakota Democrats elected a Governor).

Update: Per multiple sources, Oversen was again elected chair of the party.