Posted on 04/27/2012 5:37:47 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
The seat of retiring North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad is viewed as one of the best Republican pick-up opportunities on the Senate landscape this cycle, but Democrats have long contended that their prospects of holding onto the seat in November are better than most observers believe. To further that point, they released a new poll Friday conducted for the Peace Garden State's Democratic Party showing GOP at-large Rep. Rick Berg trailing Democrat Heidi Heitkamp by a small margin, results that were similar to a poll last November commissioned by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has purchased about $76,000 in airtime in North Dakota, matching a Crossroads GPS buy from this week. The DSCC ad is slated to run in markets across the state from April 25 to May 4.
In the new poll, conducted by St. Paul, Minn.-based DFM Research, Heitkamp leads Berg, 49 percent to 44 percent. Seven percent of likely voters are undecided or preferred another candidate.
Last November, the DSCC touted a Mellman Group survey it commissioned that showed Heitkamp leading Berg by the same, five-point margin, 47 percent to 42 percent.
Berg has been consistently trying to tie Heitkamp to President Obama. He got some help from the Crossroads GPS ad: The spot quoted Heitkamp in 2008 saying, "I think Barack Obama's going to be amazing and I think we are on our way to a better United States," and the ad's narrator says Heitkamp "supports Obamacare."
Indeed, Obama lost North Dakota by nine points in 2008, and he is in significantly worse shape in the state this year. The DFM Research poll shows former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney 19 percentage points ahead of Obama, 51 percent to 32 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com ...
This seems hard to believe and it’s a partisan poll, but the ‘Rat Party is spending money in the state. I’ve read that Rick Berg is not the great candidate he was believed to be.
I don’t think even Heitkamp believes that poll.
Berg will win by double digits. Book it.
The Dems have no farm team in ND. Heitkamp is all they could come up with, and she hasn’t won office in 16 years. I don’t have any particular nagging worries that Berg will lose, and those partisan Dem polls should be taken with a grain of salt. Those are meant to help out Heitkamp with funding by promoting her as “competive.”
With respect to the other comparison to ex-Sen. Mark Andrews, remember that he had been in the House 17 years before he got to the Senate and had the unfortunate problem of running for reelection in a bad year (1986) when he had issues. If Berg has “issues” by 2018, we’ll have lots of Republicans to take his place.
Conversely, in 1986, the Democrats were highly dominant statewide, occupying virtually every office (Andrews was the lone federal Republican that year, and there were only 2 statewide Republicans, Robert Peterson, Sr., a long-serving Auditor who would pass the job to his son in the ‘90s, and Ben Meier, the elderly Secretary of State who had been in office since 1954, back when the Socialist Non-Partisan League was still aligned with the GOP), so we weren’t in an enviable position at the time.
THE MIDDLE AMERICA BOOKS ONE OF EACH VARIETY FOR SENATE.... GOOD, BAD, AND CROOKED...
Rick Berg is not the fire-in-the-belly Conservative idealist you'd hope a conservative state like ND would send to Washington to take out Chuck Schummer.
Unfortunately, he is a real nice guy with a rather bland personality and the moderate political opinions the GOP establishment likes. As you can guess there is no fervent support for him and it shows in the polls.
Having said all this, outside groups are now spending on ads linking Heitkamp to Obama and that's all it will take for Berg to win.
Had AG Wayne Stenehjem run for the Senate, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The nomination and the general would have been gimmees. I guess he didn’t want to leave ND.
Berg will win comfortably, but not in a Hoeven-2010-type landslide. And in six years we’ll have to do it all again, perhaps against a stronger Democrat, with higher negatives for Berg, and (God willing) with no Democrat in the White House to villify. All this would be avoided with Stenehjem in the Senate. Hoeven and Stenejem could have been the Conrad and Dorgan for the next 20 years, but instead we’ll have a bit of drama for the Class 1 Senate seat.
I'm looking for North Dakota's DeMint and there just isn't one. At the state level the party is full of bland wussies.
Wayne Stenehjem is an impressive vote-getter. Whatever his views, he would be a shoo-in this year.
The track record in Senate races for long-serving AGs is superb, and I’m sure Stenehjem would win in a landslide this year and scare off any potential first-tier Democrat opponent in future elections (unless he really screwed up). Frankly, I don’t know if he’s more or les conservative than, say, Hoeven.
Frankly, I’m puzzled why Ed Schafer didn’t have a go at the Senate seat, as he would’ve won by almost Hoevenesque proportions. Then again, he turns 66 this year and that’s getting towards that point where you don’t want to embark on a long Senate career.
Ed Schafer has made it very, very clear he doesn’t want any legislative jobs. Executive tier only.
Yeah I’m not worried. If the DSCC would like to waste money on this race good for them.
I figure Berg will win by about 15, if it’s less than 10 I’d be surprised. I also don’t see who could beat him in 2018, some relic or random nobody with an unusual Scandinavian name isn’t gonna cut it. The old gang of Conrad, Dorgan, and Pomeroy worked their way up.
Berg does have a more conservative primary challenger. Perennial candidate Duane Sand. Sand deserves credit for challenging ND rats in the past when no one who could win bothered with trying but he likely has no chance to beat Berg. Dick Morris is on his bandwagon though. Amazing that Clinton’s former ***ch is now backing conservatives (or people he says are conservatives) in GOP primaries, he was also a booster of the “tea party” guy that won the Senate nod in PA.
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