Some North Dakota Democrats want to rescind support for pro-life U.S. House candidate
MINOT, N.D. — The Supreme Court opinion overturning legal precedent finding a right to abortion in the U.S. Constitution has made the abortion issue, in our nation’s political arenas, more urgent than it’s been in at least a couple of generations.
The reaction from the Democratic-NPL to the decision was a strong one. Party chairman Patrick Hart used words like “evil” and “vile” to describe it. Yet, in the spring of this year, well before the Supreme Court ruled, Hart presided over his party’s state convention where pro-life Democrat Mark Haugen’s candidacy for the U.S. House was endorsed.
Haugen told me back in May that he supports the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, and he also supports North Dakota’s trigger law, which will ban nearly all abortions in the state when it takes effect. He has since won the party’s nomination on the June primary ballot, where he ran unopposed, but some Democrats now want the party to pull its support.
A resolution being circulated by Patrick Englehardt, chairman of the District 7 Democratic-NPL, calls on the party to pull support from Haugen’s candidacy. At this point in the election cycle, Democrats can’t replace Haugen on the ballot. That die is cast. But the resolution doesn’t call for that. Instead, it asks that the party hang Haugen out to dry.
After a list of “where as” statements, the resolution states that “the Policy Committee of the North Dakota Democratic-Non Partisan League Party will no longer support the ongoing candidacy of Mark Haugen for U.S. House of Representatives.”
