North Dakota Dem-NPL, GOP parties look ahead to 2024 general election

GRAND FORKS — The 2024 general election is exactly a year out, but that’s not stopping Katrina Christiansen from getting an early start on her campaign.

The University of Jamestown assistant engineering professor and Democratic candidate plans to challenge U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., for his Senate seat next November. It will be her second bid for the Senate — last year, she challenged U.S. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., who ultimately won a third term with 56% of the vote, compared to Christiansen’s 25% and independent candidate Rick Becker’s 18%.

Last week, Christiansen was in Grand Forks talking to, as her campaign put it, “real North Dakotans.”

“I’m learning about what has people coming out on a Sunday morning,” she told the Herald Sunday, Nov. 5, at Urban Stampede, where she was joined around a table by several other patrons of the cafe.

So far that morning, she’d heard from prospective voters about homelessness among veterans, adequate pay, domestic violence, a lack of mental health care resources, maintaining agricultural markets and the energy sector. The conversations are a part of Christiansen’s

month-long statewide campaign tour,

which kicked off with her formal candidacy announcement Nov. 3 in Jamestown.

In deep red North Dakota, Christiansen’s odds against the incumbent Cramer might be long — North Dakotans voted 65% in favor of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential race, and Republicans make up 88% of the state Legislature — but North Dakota Dem-NPL Chair Adam Goldwyn said he believes Democrats are poised for success in next year’s elections across the nation, including in North Dakota.

“I think about it less in terms of Republican or Democrat, and more in terms of what choice are the citizens of the state being offered?” he said, pointing to former North Dakota Sen. Ray Holmberg of Grand Forks, the state Senate’s longest-serving senator, who was recently

indicted for having sex with a minor,

and Dave Roetman, the short-lived executive director of the NDGOP who

resigned a week after being hired

after dozens of bigoted and misogynistic posts were uncovered on his social media accounts.

“Do they want to be associated with a party like that?” Goldwyn said.

Sandi Sanford, chair of the North Dakota GOP, could not be reached for a full interview last week. However, in a brief scheduling phone call on Tuesday, hours before polls closed in elections across the country, she noted that Republicans across the U.S. would be watching those results very closely, and that they would be “big indicators of next year,” she said, of “what Republicans want.” Goldwyn echoed that Democrats also plan to take cues for the next year of campaigning from this week’s elections.

Voters last week chose governors in Kentucky and Mississippi and legislative control in Virginia and New Jersey. Reuters reported that Democrats saw wins in Kentucky, Virginia and New Jersey, while Republicans came out ahead in Mississippi. Ohioans also voted to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitution and approved a ballot measure legalizing recreational marijuana. As results came in this week,

a Reuters news report

regarded the night as a win for abortion rights activists.

In North Dakota, as of now, Christiansen is the only declared Dem-NPL candidate, although Goldwyn reports party leadership has already initiated conversations with prospective candidates in other races. He expects more candidates to formally declare following the party convention in April in Bismarck.

“We’ve been having dozens upon dozens upon dozens of conversations with local, potential state legislative candidates,” he said. “Some that we’ve identified and sought out, and many others who, frankly, have called me on the phone and said, ‘Hey, I don’t like what’s happening, I don’t like the Republican supermajority, I don’t like what they’re doing, and I want to represent my values” — and so I think that we’ll see a very strong legislative slate.” 

It’s too early to identify the races to watch, Goldwyn said, although he said he will be interested to see whether Gov. Doug Burgum runs for reelection after what Goldwyn referred to as Burgum’s “vanity”

presidential campaign.

In the meantime, he said the North Dakota Dem-NPL plans to spend the runup to the 2024 election “(doing) what it always does:” representing solutions, having one-on-one conversations with as many voters as possible “about the real issues affecting real people in their districts,” and focusing on empowering local leaders.

Christiansen’s statewide campaign tour is ultimately a good model of that, he said. He acknowledged that Christiansen’s odds are steep — but he struck a note of optimism.

“I think we have a good shot,” he said.

“We’re going to make this competitive,” Christiansen said last Sunday. “We’ve got a long road, but the Democrats have won before, and we’re going to show them they can win again.”