What do you call one Democrat surrounded by twelve Republicans? Heidi.
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp is the only thing North Dakota Democrats have going for them right now. A few years ago, Democrats held both U.S. Senate seats and the state’s at-large congressional seat, but Byron Dorgan, Kent Conrad and Earl Pomeroy have all since cashed out to K Street.
Now Republicans hold the U.S. House seat and Dorgan’s Senate seat, and Republicans serve as North Dakota’s governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer, auditor, insurance commissioner, superintendent of public instruction, secretary of state, attorney general, ag commissioner and tax commissioner.
Heitkamp would surely be a top GOP target when she’s up for reelection in 2018. As a result, she’s rumored to be considering running for governor.
If she were elected governor, she’d be in better position to try to rebuild the moribund party. And here’s a bonus for Democrats: She could appoint someone to serve until 2018, and that person would have the advantage of incumbency in 2018.
To ward this off, Republicans in the state legislature are lining up a bill to take away the governor’s power to fill Senate vacancies. Rob Port, North Dakota’s best political blogger, has the story. The governor would have to call a special election within sixty days of the Senate seat becoming vacant.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because Massachusetts Democrats took this same action when Mitt Romney was governor and Ted Kennedy was sick. They didn’t want Romney defiling the “Kennedy Seat” with a Republican, so they required a special election. The irony: Kennedy died when Democrat Deval Patrick was governor. Instead of his getting to fill the vacancy, there was a special election, which Republican Scott Brown won.
The motivation here is partisan, but Port makes a good point: We’ve settled on elected, not appointed senators; shouldn’t we make that apply to filling vacancies?
