Port: Auditor Gallion, Moms for Liberty get a shellacking in western North Dakota

MINOT — Members of the far-right culture warrior faction of the North Dakota Republican Party attempted a recall of school district officials in Williston, and that’s statewide news.

The NDGOP is now

under the control of this faction,

thanks to district-level machinations where just a dozen or so people can have an impact, but what happened in Williston, one of the most conservative communities in our state, doesn’t portend good things for this movement’s popularity with the larger electorate.

The motivations for the recall election were the usual things. Teachers are groomers. Books should be banned. Not enough religion in the classroom. The Sons of Liberty and Moms for Liberty — the former a far-right North Dakota group that is metastasizing in the NDGOP, the latter a local chapter of a national group — were outspoken supporters of the recall.

Here’s a photo a Williston-based reader sent me of one of the recall activists at work:

Auditor Josh Gallion, who has made it clear that he harbors

few scruples when it comes to using the powers of his office to further his political ambitions,

and who makes a habit of pandering to the culture warriors,

visited Williston ahead of the recall election.

Ostensibly, he was there to present the findings of an audit of a now-defunct school district, but it was a political event sponsored by two local NDGOP districts,

the leadership of which is affiliated with the Sons of Liberty.

Gallion has tried to characterize it as merely an informational event, despite the partisan sponsorship and the scheduling contemporaneous to the recall election, but the aim was clearly to gin up support for the recall election.

And it backfired. On Tuesday, the Williston Herald reported that the incumbents in the race, the folks the Moms for Liberty and Sons of Liberty groups were trying oust,

won by wide margins.

“Considering that the challengers are all strongly affiliated with the Sons/Moms of Liberty groups I personally find this result to be encouraging that they people are paying attention and wanting to see common sense/moderate leadership,” one Williston local told me about the results in the email. “I know it is a small sample but perhaps this is helping to show that the extremes are not the majority.”

I agree. It is merely an anecdote, but it is, perhaps, an instructive one.

The book-banning, LGBTQ-hating culture warriors who are working hard at taking over state politics have been successful in some ways. They now control a narrow majority of the NDGOP’s district-level committees and, with that slim majority, they

put one of their own in as chair of the NDGOP.

They also wield influence in the Legislature, where seats are often won with just a few thousand votes.

But they’ve yet to demonstrate that their issues, and their priorities, are what the majority of the electorate want.

When one of their most prominent leaders, former state Rep. Rick Becker, last year ran as an independent against incumbent U.S. Sen. John Hoeven, who he accused of being a namby-pamby RINO, he lost.

In a landslide.

And not just to Hoeven, but to Democratic-NPL candidate Katrina Christiansen, as well.

Even in Williams County, which is home to Williston and is, again, one of the most conservative parts of North Dakota, Becker got just 25% of the vote to Hoeven’s nearly 62%.

The Trump-aligned populist culture warriors would have us believe that they’re the future of politics in North Dakota. And, again, they’ve certainly had an impact on Republican politics in the state.

But I remain unconvinced that their hateful, nihilistic view of the world is supported by a majority of North Dakota voters.