North Dakota
Port: 2 of North Dakota’s most notorious MAGA lawmakers draw primary challengers
MINOT — Minot’s District 3 is home to Reps. Jeff Hoverson and Lori VanWinkle, two of the most controversial members of the Legislature, but maybe not for much longer.
District 3, like all odd-numbered districts in our state, is on the ballot this election cycle, and the House incumbents there
have just drawn two serious challengers.
Tim Mihalick and Blaine DesLauriers, each with a background in banking, have announced campaigns for those House seats. Mihalick is a senior vice president at First Western Bank & Trust and serves on the State Board of Higher Education. DesLauriers is vice chair of the board and senior executive vice president at First International Bank & Trust.
The entry into this race has delighted a lot of traditionally conservative Republicans in North Dakota
Hoverson, who has worked as a Lutheran pastor, has frequently made headlines with his bizarre antics. He was
banned from the Minot International Airport
after he accused a security agent of trying to touch his genitals. He also
objected
to a Hindu religious leader participating in the Legislature’s schedule of multi-denominational invocation leaders and, on his local radio show, seemed to suggest that Muslim cultures that force women to wear burkas
have it right.
Hoeverson has also backed legislation to mandate prayer and the display of the Ten Commandments in schools, and to encourage the end of Supreme Court precedent prohibiting bans on same sex marriage.
Tom Stromme / The Bismarck Tribune
VanWinkle, for her part, went on a rant last year in which she suggested that women struggling with infertility have been cursed by God
(she later claimed her comments, which were documented in a floor speech, were taken out of context)
before taking
a weeklong ski vacation
during the busiest portion of the legislative session (she continued to collect her daily legislative pay while absent). When asked by a constituent why she doesn’t attend regular public forums in Minot during the legislative session,
she said she wasn’t willing to “sacrifice” any more of her personal time.
The incumbents haven’t officially announced their reelection bids, but it’s my practice to treat all incumbents as though they’re running again until we learn otherwise.
In many ways, VanWinkle and Hoverson are emblematic of the ascendant populist, MAGA-aligned faction of the North Dakota Republican Party. They are on the extreme fringe of conservative politics, and openly detest their traditionally conservative leaders. Now they’ve got challengers who are respected members of Minot’s business community, and will no doubt run well-organized and well-funded campaigns.
If the 2026 election is a turning point in the
internecine conflict among North Dakota Republicans
— the battle to see if our state will be governed by traditional conservatives or culture war populists — this primary race in District 3 could well be the hinge on which it turns.
In the 2024 cycle, there was an effort, largely organized by then-Rep. Brandon Prichard, to push far-right challengers against more moderate incumbent Republicans.
It was largely unsuccessful.
Most of the candidates Prichard backed lost, including Prichard himself, who was
defeated in the June primary
by current Rep. Mike Berg, a candidate with a political profile not all that unlike that of Mihalick and DesLauriers.
But these struggles among Republicans are hardly unique to North Dakota, and the populist MAGA faction has done better elsewhere. In South Dakota, for instance, in the 2024 primary,
more than a dozen incumbent Republicans were swept out of office.
Can North Dakota’s normie Republicans avoid that fate? They’ll get another test in 2026, but recruiting strong challengers like Mihalick and DesLauriers is a good sign for them.
North Dakota
Halt in drilling by one of North Dakota’s largest oil producers expected to bring layoffs
BISMARCK — A stop to oil drilling in North Dakota by one of the largest producers in the state will likely lead to layoffs but is “nothing new” to the industry, experts said.
Harold Hamm, founder of Continental Resources, said his company plans to
stop drilling in North Dakota’s Bakken formation for the first time in 30 years
because of low crude oil prices, according to a Monday, Jan. 19, report.
At a North Dakota Industrial Commission meeting the next day, Gov. Kelly Armstrong said people should understand that Continental is not pulling up stakes in North Dakota.
“To be clear, this isn’t the first time an oil company has laid down rigs on infield drilling locations when they’re at a break-even point. … This happens a lot,” Armstrong said.
Nathan Anderson, director of the state Department of Mineral Resources, said Continental plans to halt its three drilling rigs by the end of February.
“They would evaluate whether they pick up rigs after that, based on where oil production is and where the economics are,” Anderson said at the meeting.
The financial break-even point for oil is anywhere from $50 to $65 a barrel, he said.
WTI crude oil futures extended losses to $59 a barrel on Thursday, Jan. 22, amid mounting evidence of an oversupplied market, an industry publication reported.
Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, said operations will continue on the 20,000 producing wells in the state, and this development related to drilling new wells is “nothing new.”
“We’ve had a good run in North Dakota in the Bakken, and it’s going to go through commodity downturns like this. That’s where we’re at today, and it looks like we’re going to be here for a while, possibly,” he told The Forum.
North Dakota is a major player in the U.S. oil industry, ranking third only to Texas and New Mexico, according to industry statistics.
The state relies heavily on tax revenues from the sale of oil and gas to fund vital infrastructure and other projects, so downturns in the market could impact state budgets.
When oil prices and activity levels drop, North Dakota needs to budget accordingly, which was done during the last legislative session,
Anderson said in a previous interview.
Forum file photo
Continental has a big footprint in North Dakota, second only to Chord Energy, headquartered in Houston, the largest operator in the Bakken, Ness said.
Chord has not publicly indicated its plans, he said, while other large companies such as ConocoPhillips, Exxon and Devon Energy might be able to reduce but not halt drilling activity.
Public companies will likely make such announcements at quarterly investor meetings in early to mid-February, he said.
North Dakota is not alone, with all oil basins seeing reductions in activity. Ness said the Permian Basin in Texas, which produces more than 5 million barrels of oil a day, is looking at a 15% drilling reduction.
The state has weathered downturns before, in 2009 and 2015, and in 2020 at the start of COVID-19 pandemic.
Exploration and drilling of new wells, a massive investment for oil companies, is important to the industry because well outputs decline over time, Ness said.
There are about 30 rigs drilling new wells currently in the state, a number that will begin to decline in the weeks to come with Continental’s moves, and possible reductions by other companies.
“They’re just pacing their new investments for a while, until they feel that outlook is better. A lot of people don’t want that oil produced at $45 to $50. They feel that oil’s worth $75 to $90 a barrel. If you produce it, you’ve got to sell it,” he said.
Forum News Service file photo
While it still takes tens of thousands of people to produce North Dakota’s typical 1.1 million barrels of oil each day, the exploration and drilling side of the industry employs the highest number of people, Ness said.
That workforce tends to be more transient, coming from all over the country and the world, he said, and is where there will likely be layoffs or consolidations, impacts that could be felt by March.
“It certainly is, hopefully, just a short term ramification of news like this,” he said.
North Dakota State Bison (17-5, 7-0 Summit League) at Oral Roberts Golden Eagles (5-16, 0-6 Summit League)
Tulsa, Oklahoma; Saturday, 8 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: North Dakota State visits Oral Roberts after Trevian Carson scored 23 points in North Dakota State’s 82-77 victory over the Denver Pioneers.
The Golden Eagles are 4-6 in home games. Oral Roberts averages 13.5 turnovers per game and is 2-6 when it has fewer turnovers than its opponents.
The Bison have gone 7-0 against Summit League opponents. North Dakota State is 15-2 when it turns the ball over less than its opponents and averages 10.9 turnovers per game.
Oral Roberts’ average of 8.3 made 3-pointers per game this season is just 0.3 more made shots on average than the 8.0 per game North Dakota State gives up. North Dakota State averages 9.1 made 3-pointers per game this season, 1.7 more made shots on average than the 7.4 per game Oral Roberts allows.
The Golden Eagles and Bison meet Saturday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Connor Dow averages 2.4 made 3-pointers per game for the Golden Eagles, scoring 12.4 points while shooting 32.1% from beyond the arc. Ty Harper is shooting 36.4% and averaging 12.0 points over the last 10 games.
Damari Wheeler-Thomas is scoring 13.7 points per game and averaging 3.8 rebounds for the Bison. Carson is averaging 15.3 points and 5.4 rebounds over the last 10 games.
LAST 10 GAMES: Golden Eagles: 1-9, averaging 68.9 points, 29.5 rebounds, 11.9 assists, 5.9 steals and 2.9 blocks per game while shooting 42.0% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 73.9 points per game.
Bison: 8-2, averaging 80.4 points, 32.2 rebounds, 14.7 assists, 8.6 steals and 3.0 blocks per game while shooting 48.6% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 71.1 points.
___
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
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