Plain Talk

Minot, N.D. — It was a busy episode of Plain Talk today.

Sen. Kevin Cramer joined to discuss everything from the reason why he endorsed incumbent Sen. John Hoeven over challenger Rick Becker (he said Hoeven was not only his colleague but also his "mentor), the war in Ukraine (he says Biden is doing many of the right things, only he's doing them too late), energy (there's "nothing moral" about exporting our climate guilt), and the Supreme Court nomination battle.

On that last issue, Cramer said he hasn't made up his mind yet. He said he's reviewed the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings, but still has a meeting coming up with Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson which he'd like to honor.

"If I make a hard decision before that I'll probably cut her loose," he said, but as of now he intends to talk with her privately first. He said one thing he'd like to discuss with her, which hasn't gotten a lot of attention, are her views on the right of states and what Cramer calls "cooperative federalism."

A ballot measure aimed at implementing term limits in North Dakota for the governor and members of the legislature hit the skids when the Secretary of State's office disqualified tens of thousands of signatures.

How did a political campaign screw up an issue that, all else aside, is almost certainly popular with most North Dakotans?

My co-host Chad Oban and I talked about it on this episode of Plain Talk with House Minority Leader Josh Boschee, a Democrat from Fargo. Boschee said he's against term limits, but is more disappointed in what this ballot measure campaign has done to the credibility of the initiated measure process.

Boschee also talked about his party's upcoming state convention and what the next legislative session might look like. Boschee is the only one of the legislature's four leaders who is returning. House Majority Leader Chet Pollert, Senate Majority Leader Rich Wardner, and Senate Minority Leader Joan Heckaman are all retiring.

"I don't know who I'll be working with," Boschee said. He gave credit to past Republican leadership in the legislature, noting that they were pragmatic and often willing to work with the Democratic minority, but expressed concerns over that sort of approach to legislating taking a back seat as the NDGOP grows more extreme.

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Thanks to Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, and politics that are largely hostile to oil and gas development here in America, our energy prices are skyrocketing.

You know it. You've been to a fuel pump lately. You've seen the prices at the grocery store. Oil touches nearly every part of our lives, and when its price goes up, our lives get more expensive a lot faster than most of us can make more money.

On this episode of Plain Talk the president of North Dakota's oil industry group argues that American energy policies have had been "exporting our guilt" to other parts of the world.

From political activism to litigation to government regulation, we've made producing oil and gas in America harder even as demand for those products has continued to climb. This has been great for countries like Russia and Venezuela even as it drives up prices for Americans.

Even worse, Ness notes, this trend is bad for the environment. Russia's regulation of oil and gas development is not as responsible as America's.

Oil and gas produced in America is going to be cleaner oil and gas.

North Dakota oil, specifically, can be "the cleanest barrel of oil in the world," Ness says, but points out that domestic policies, such as the Biden administration's moratorium on leases on federal lands as well as its insistence on running up the price of production by tacking on so-called "social costs," are making it harder to produce that barrel.

Ness also discusses North Dakota's oil tax policy, saying a trigger that kicks in a higher tax rate at high oil prices should go away in favor of a flat tax.

In 2020, Shelley Lenz ran for governor, and received the endorsement of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL to do so.

But in 2022, Lenz is running for the state Senate, only she's doing so as an independent.

Why the switch? Neither party is doing right by the people, Lenz argued on this episode of Plain Talk.

Lenz is hoping to be elected to the legislature in Dickinson-area District 37, where Republican Senate Majority Leader Rich Wardner is retiring. She says the issues around the Legacy Fund's investments, some of which have gone to not-so-great places like Russia and China, is an example of what she's talking about.

Though lawmakers have already created a program to divert as much as 20 percent of the Legacy Fund's investments to North Dakota, Lenz says she wants more, as much as 50 or 60 percent.

Will that message resonate with voters? And can someone who isn't a Republican win in western North Dakota?

That's why we hold the elections, folks.

During their 2021 regular session, North Dakota's lawmakers did something they hadn't ever done before in state history.

They expelled one of their own.

Luke Simons, then an elected member of the House from Dickinson, was expelled after my reporting exposed documents detailing years of harassment of people who work in and around the Legislature, including two of his fellow lawmakers, Rep. Emily O'Brien from Grand Forks and Rep. Brandy Pyle of Casselton.

Now, during their interim between sessions, lawmakers are looking at how their harassment policies might be strengthened. O'Brien joined this episode of Plain Talk to discuss just how tall an order that is.

She noted that implementing these policies is difficult because they apply to elected officials who aren't really anyone's employees outside of the voters. Also complicating the work is that many in the public are fine with this sort of behavior from their elected officials.

Simons, a member of the controversial Bastiat Caucus of Trump-aligned Republican lawmakers, still enjoys support to this day. Several lawmakers who voted for his expulsion have been censured over it at meetings of their district party committees. It's very possible that Simons could run for, and win, a seat in the Legislature in the future.

What then? There don't seem to be any good answers.

Also on this episode, Wednesday co-host Chad Oban and I talk about the Democratic-NPL denying me media credentials for their upcoming state party as well as the debate over energy policy that's erupted in America since Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the resulting disruptions it provoked in international energy markets.

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The politics around local development were already a fraught exercise before the cloud of geopolitical issues cast a shadow over them.

Things like economic incentives, zoning ordinances, traffic, smells, noise, and infrastructure loads have never been easy to navigate. But add in growing concerns over the presence, in our local economies, of businesses based in places like China? The process becomes positively byzantine.

The Fufeng Group would like to build a corn milling plant near Grand Forks, North Dakota, and all the usual concerns are around it. Are they getting too much taxpayer support? Is the project palatable to those who have to live or work near it?

But then there's also the fact that Fufeng is based in China which is ruled by an oppressive Communist government that, among other sins against basic human decency, has millions of ethnic minorities confined in forced labor camps.

Grand Forks Mayor Brandon Bochenski joins this episode of Plain Talk to discuss the Fufeng project debate which has roiled his community so much that one person tried to make a citizen's arrest of the city council at a recent meeting.

Bochenski acknowledges that concerns about China are valid, all the more so after Russia's invasion of Ukraine elevated the question of our nation's economic ties to these regimes, but argued that a local city council is ill-prepared to take the lead on them.

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In 1977, Jimmy Carter was taking over the White House. Art Link was governor of North Dakota. "You Light Up My Life" by Debbie Boon was at the top of the charts, and movies like "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and "Smokey and the Bandit" were drawing audiences to theaters.

Also, Sen. Ray Holmberg also took his seat in North Dakota's legislature for the first time.

Now, 46 years later, this constant in our state's politics is calling it a career.

On this episode of Plain Talk, he reflects on his proudest accomplishment (promoting the UAV industry in his hometown of Grand Forks), his favorite governor (Jack Dalrymple), and the biggest challenges facing North Dakota in the future, including the growing acrimony in the NDGOP, its dominant political party, and the uncertainty of the oil, gas, and coal industries.

About the rancor in the NDGOP, Holmberg said many voters are turned off by local meetings where attendees "listen to people scream 'point of order, point of order, point of order' for an hour." He said he expects incumbent Senator John Hoeven to win on the June ballot, but that the Donald Trump-aligned wing of the party is "very skilled" at organizing for the convention process, and more moderate Republicans need to get better at it.

What's changed from the beginning of his almost five decades in the legislature to the end? Holmberg says more people than ever are engaged in a process that's also more open and accessible than before.

When he started, he said the only way most North Dakotans could reach their lawmakers during the session, other than traveling to Bismarck, was by sending a letter or calling a toll-free telephone number and leaving them a message. Now the public can watch floor sessions and committee hearings and email or even text their lawmakers in real-time.

Something that's both good and bad, Holmberg says.

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How do you report the news, and in particular political news, fairly and faithfully in an environment where so many people can find sources on social media and talk radio and cable news who are willing to tell them only what they want to hear?

Matthew von Pinnon, the editor of the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, talks about that on this issue of Plain Talk. He says the bias many imagine, where newspaper editors and publishers sit around a table in a smoky room to decide what the news will be, simply doesn't happen.

Von Pinnon also weighs in on North Dakota's interesting 2022 election cycle, including the in-fighting in the North Dakota Republican Party, and why the Democratic-NPL can't seem to find the energy to take advantage.

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The North Dakota Republican Party has had a dominant, three-decades-long run in state politics, but former Governor Ed Schafer, whose election in 1992 was the dawn of that era of success, says the sunset could be upon us.

It doesn't have to be, he said on this episode of Plain Talk. Things can still be corrected. But the path the party is on right now isn't one that leads to sustained success, he argues.

That was part of the reason why he endorsed incumbent U.S. Senator John Hoeven. "A lot of it was the nastiness," he said.

Hoeven is facing a challenge for the NDGOP nomination from state Rep. Rick Becker, who has burnished appeal to a very Trumpy, very online faction of Republicans who have no problem being confrontational, disruptive, and often just plain mean.

"It's distributing to me," Schafer said.

He's worried that if Becker's approach to politics becomes the norm in the NDGOP, North Dakota voters will lose faith in a party whose candidates they've been consistently voting for over generations.

The officials overseeing North Dakota's investments are acting quickly to divest from investments in Russia in the wake of the terrible invasion of Ukraine.

Already about 37 percent of the investments overseen by the State Investment Board have been pulled. It will take some time to pull the rest out - the investments are complicated, and officials are trying to limit the financial hit North Dakotans will take - but there's a plan in place to make it happen.

But should our strategy about investing in countries with not-so-great political leadership change going forward?

"I think it has to," Thomas Beadle said on this episode of Plain Talk.

Beadle was elected as North Dakota's Treasurer last year, and by law is a member of the SIB. He said officials at the SIB, as well as other state boards, such as the Land Board, which oversees the investment of North Dakota's funds, are having a debate about that shift in policy now.

But it can be complicated. Investing in state-owned companies is one thing, but what about American companies that do businesses in places like China or Russia? Also, is there danger in setting a precedent for reactionary investing? Do we want to open the door to pulling investments in companies based in other states because North Dakotans don't like the politics there?

Beadle says we have to find a balance, and state investment officials are working to find out what looks like.

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