A new North Dakota Republican group has formed to push back against a perceived ultraconservative influence in state politics.

Former NDGOP Chair Perrie Schafer has formed the LegeNDary Fund, which he described in a letter to potential donors as supporting “center-right” Republicans. Schafer wrote that it will become increasingly difficult to win elections statewide and nationally if candidates, elected officials and leaders keep trying to “burn the house down.”

The purpose of the group, he said, is to ensure that North Dakota doesn’t become like other Republican-led states, such as Arizona and Georgia, where, even with legislative majorities, they lose statewide offices and national elections to Democrats.

“What we see happening is when the ultraconservatives take over a state, they take over the state party, but they lose elections,” Schafer told the North Dakota Monitor.

As a result, a majority of the Republican Party became less engaged and started feeling they were not being represented, he said.

“All we’re trying to do is suggest that people from the center of the party get more engaged,” Schafer said.

Schafer was voted out as chair of the NDGOP in 2023 after serving a two-year term and replaced by current chair Sandi Sanford, who won by one vote.

“Some people are going to try to blow it out of proportion saying, ‘this is Perrie Schafer against Sandi Sanford,’’’ Schafer said. “No. It has nothing to do with that.”

He also added, “This is not an anti-NDGOP thing at all.”

Schafer registered the LegeNDary political action committee and LegeNDary multicandidate committee with the North Dakota Secretary of State’s Office.

A political action committee, or PAC, can spend funds on the same things as a political party, said Lee Ann Oliver, election specialist for the North Dakota Secretary of State’s Office.

Sanford said she doesn’t see the LegeNDary political action committee as a threat to the NDGOP.

“That’s fair game,” Sanford said. “There’s different factions on both sides of the aisle that have PACs, that’s fair game in politics.”

However, she added she sees the group as settling more on the center-left than the center-right.

“I’m a middle-right conservative,” she said. “And there’s possibly an ocean between me and the far, far-right.”

Sanford said she’s been trying to unify the party over the last year and the LegeNDary group may have the opposite effect.

She also said it’s unclear what the outcomes of the new LegeNDary group are going to be, but she considered the timing of the group’s launch to be “poor” because of the upcoming party presidential caucuses on Monday and looming statewide NDGOP Convention in April.

“It is an indication that they are supporting the bypass of the NDGOP endorsement,” Sanford said. “And for a former chair to say that he supports the NDGOP, I don’t see that in this effort at this time.”

Schafer served as the Republican National Committee’s Midwest Regional Chair from 2021 to 2022, which represented Republican interests for 14 states. He also served the RNC on the nine-member National Resolution Committee.

Rep. Mike Nathe, R-Bismarck, who along with his fellow District 30 Republican incumbents skipped their district endorsing convention to proceed directly to the June 11 statewide primary, said he considers himself a centrist-conservative and sees the new group as a reaction to the increase in far-right candidates, lawmakers and local and state party officials. He added the perceived differences between factions within the party may steer donor dollars to these upstart organizations.

“I think in the past … a lot of this money probably would’ve gone to the party,” Nathe said. “But now, these monies are ending up in these various PACs to support candidates that they want.”

Schafer said LegeNDary is not affiliated with a multicandidate committee registered by Rep. Brandon Prichard, R-Bismarck, under the same name.

This article first appeared in the North Dakota Monitor, a sister site of the Nebraska Examiner in the States Newsroom network.