Democrat earns some of Trump’s loyalists by leaning GOP
BISMARCK, N.D. — Sen. Heidi Heitkamp is the only statewide-elected Democrat in heavily Republican North Dakota, where President Donald Trump rolled to a win last year and the GOP is optimistic about knocking out the senator in next year’s midterm elections.
Yet Heitkamp hardly resembles many of her hard-charging, Trump-resisting Democratic colleagues in Washington. She welcomed word of Trump’s planned visit to the state today, expressing the hope that he addresses “the kitchen-table issues that keep North Dakotans” up at night. She has voted for Trump nominees and diverges from Democratic orthodoxy on numerous issues, especially her state’s prized energy reserves.
It’s why the 61-year-old Heitkamp is acceptable to a good number of the president’s supporters.
“I know she knows North Dakota,” said Williston bank employee Steve Slocum, 55, who voted for Trump last year and Heitkamp in 2012. “She’s not stupid. She’s going to be as moderate as she can be.”
Heitkamp hasn’t announced whether she will seek a second term, but she would pose a surprising obstacle to Republicans’ hope of expanding their 52-seat majority. With $3 million socked away for a campaign, Heitkamp has one little-known Republican state senator as a challenger while her best-known potential GOP opponent, the state’s lone member of the U.S. House, bides his time.
Trump’s visit to the state today is in part to pressure Heitkamp to support GOP tax legislation. Whatever warnings he has for her, Trump cannot credibly paint her as purely partisan, Republican former Gov. Ed Schafer said. “She is a good public servant,” Schafer said. “And she has made several votes that were against the Democratic caucus.”
Heitkamp is among 10 Democrats in states Trump carried who are up for re-election in 2018. The state’s solid Republican trend and Trump’s huge margin of victory, 36 percentage points, put her at risk of losing her seat.
But she broke with Democrats on Trump priorities such as business deregulation, was among three Democrats to support Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, and was among two to vote for EPA Director Scott Pruitt.