North Dakota Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer defeated Democrat Heidi Heitkamp for her Senate seat on Tuesday, giving Republicans another boost in the Senate where they are adding to their slim majority.
Heitkamp consistently trailed Cramer in polls in the reliably red state. A RealClearPolitics average of polls had Cramer leading by 9 points in the final weeks before Election Day.
Heitkamp won her Senate seat in 2012 by fewer than 3,000 votes.
Native Americans strongly backed Heitkamp in the last election, but this time around a federal judge denied the tribes’ request for a temporary exemption from a new state voter I.D. law that requires residents to show a valid I.D. with a current residential street address. Native Americans have said the law disenfranchises them because those who live on reservations don’t have standard addresses.
Heitkamp faced pressure from both sides of the aisle over her vote on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Heitkamp was ready to vote in favor of President Trump’s nominee, as she had done with Justice Neil Gorsuch, until Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanugh of sexually assaulting her when they were in high school, which Kavanaugh vehemently denied.
Even before Heitkamp voted against Kavanaugh she was already seen as one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats this year, facing an uphill battle to re-election in a state Trump won by 36 percentage points in 2016.
Her campaign stumbled last month when it identified domestic violence, sexual abuse, and rape victims without their consent, while misidentifying others, in a newspaper advertisement.
North Dakota Republicans attacked the mistake as “another example” of Heitkamp “exploiting whoever she can for political gain.”
