There were just 35 individuals who made disclosed contributions to Rick Becker’s Senate campaign
U.S. Senate candidate Rick Becker, a Bismarck state representative, waits to speaks to delegates at the North Dakota Republican state convention on Saturday, April 2, 2022.
MINOT, N.D. — Coming out of the NDGOP’s state convention earlier this month, one of the primary talking points for the backers of failed U.S. Senate candidate Rick Becker is that the state’s Republican “establishment” didn’t respect the convention delegates.
Incumbent Sen. John Hoeven, who won the convention’s endorsement, didn’t commit to abiding by the convention’s decision. Had he not received that endorsement, he would have campaigned to the June primary for the decision of rank-and-file Republican voters statewide.
According to the Becker backers, this was some evil sort of betrayal of the convention delegates.
I never bought into that talking point. If Becker thought he could win in June, I thought, he would have run a primary campaign after losing at the convention. He didn’t because, as I’ve mentioned before, he was afraid a landslide loss to Hoeven on the statewide ballot would shatter the myth of his widespread appeal.
But now I’ve seen Becker’s April quarterly campaign report, just filed this morning, April 12, with the FEC, and the first report his Senate campaign has filed since he launched it this cycle, and we now have a more palpable reason for Becker’s demurral.
He probably couldn’t afford it.
