DICKEY COUNTY, N.D. — Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in an interview Thursday lashed President Trump on border security, charging that the administration has failed to produce an adequate blueprint for halting illegal crossings from Mexico.
The Democrat, fighting an uphill re-election battle in this pro-Trump Republican bastion, chided the president on his signature issue, saying she has yet to see a cogent plan for fixing interior enforcement or building a wall along the southern border that will work. Heitkamp reserved some of that fire for fellow Democrats, pointedly disagreeing with liberals who dismiss concerns about illegal immigration and want Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, abolished.
“I do not believe our Southwest border’s secure. So I don’t share the view, when people say: ‘Well, we don’t need to do anything, the border’s secure.’ The border’s not secure. But we need to be smart about how we do border security,” Heitkamp told the Washington Examiner. “We’re waiting for a southern border strategy.”
[Related: Trump ‘certainly’ open to government shutdown for ‘great border security’]
“What I will say on abolishing ICE: I just find that — I’m a former attorney general. I will admit a bias for law enforcement,” the senator added. “To criticize anyone in law enforcement for doing what they’re doing — doing their job as they’ve been told to do their job? That just doesn’t sit will with me.”
Heitkamp discussed a range of issues after participating in a groundbreaking ceremony for a new, 20,000-acre wind farm in South Central North Dakota, near Ellendale, a tiny agriculture community. Heitkamp, 62, faces at-large Rep. Kevin Cramer, 57, in the midterm elections, and recent private and public polling has shown the Republican with a durable lead.
Amid the hoopla of the new energy project, anxiety about Trump’s trade policies persisted, which some here believe could become a political major issue in the Senate race.
As Heitkamp made the rounds to pose for pictures and answer questions from local farmers, most wanted to talk about the trade disputes with China and other countries that they fear could spiral out of control and cost them hundreds of millions of dollars by year’s end.
Trump has slapped tariffs on imports to pressure U.S. trading partners to extend better terms to American exports. But the retaliatory tariffs that followed threaten to hit North Dakota hard. The state exports two-thirds of its soybean crop to China, which has basically closed its market to U.S. crops.
Heitkamp said flatly that Trump’s plan to keep agriculture afloat during extended trade negotiations is wholly insufficient. The $12 billion federal bailout, which Cramer also takes credit for securing, will pay out too little to individual farmers and possibly arrive too late to make a difference, the senator said.
“The other thing I want to point out, the steel tariffs are hitting us hard here. What manufacturing we have is basically ag equipment manufacturing,” Heitkamp added. “I’d give this up as a political issue if I could see happier faces on the faces of these folks who are concerned.”
Like other vulnerable Senate Democrats, Heitkamp sees a path to overcoming her state’s red tide through the healthcare issue.
Heitkamp, saying she opposes Democratic plans for nationalizing healthcare and creating a government-run single-payer system, is running on preserving Obamacare, with an emphasis on the law’s pre-existing conditions guarantee. The senator said that when she was campaigning for her first term — back in 2012, the first question most voters asked was about her stance on the Affordable Care Act.
“They don’t ask that anymore,” Heitkamp said. “They say: ‘What’s your position on healthcare?’”
Heitkamp is scheduled on Aug. 15 to meet with Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s pick to replace Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Progressive activists are pressuring Senate Democrats to do everything they can to block his nomination. The senator, who supported Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Justice Neil Gorsuch, said she would make a decision after the confirmation hearings in the fall.
