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Groton Daily Independent
Saturday, June 09, 2018 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 330 ~ 29 of 59
Heitkamp also voted against move forward on a bill that would make nearly all abortions illegal after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and that’s a sore spot with North Dakota’s active evangelical conservatives.
She did lead a bipartisan effort to lift the 40-year ban on U.S. oil exports in 2015, against the wishes of Democratic President Barack. But she faced a backlash from the petroleum industry this year for voting to keep in place limits on burning excess natural gas released from oil drilling sites. Heitkamp, a former natural gas company director, argued that the excess could be captured and sold.
Cramer said Heitkamp is in a bind.
“She has a big dilemma,” he told the AP. “On one hand, she wants to portray herself in North Dakota as a Trump supporter. On the other hand, she wants to be a Democrat and not torque off her big-money, liberal friends. People aren’t falling for it.”
But Heitkamp is a known entity in North Dakota, recognizable to many with her unruly red hair, barn coat and booming laugh.
She visited a grain cooperative and ethanol processing plant in the high, green plains west of Bismarck during the Senate’s Memorial Day recess. Republican Mike Appert, a farmer who met Heitkamp for the first time last week at Red Trail Energy, said she gets high marks from conservatives for her support of the ethanol industry.
Appert, disappointed by her tax-cut and abortion bill opposition, said he appreciates her willingness to work with Trump.
“From a lot of people I’ve talked to, people who voted for Trump for president are going to vote for Heidi,” said Appert, who is undecided in the Senate race, but said Heitkamp “deserves a close look.”
Heitkamp’s up-front spot at Trump’s banking bill signing recalled the time when she joined him on stage for a rally in North Dakota last fall, a symbol of their uncommon bond.
She flew aboard Air Force One from Washington to Bismarck for a September rally. That was nine months after Trump invited her during the presidential transition to Trump Tower, where she rejected his offer of a Cabinet-level position.
Cramer, who initially turned down challenging Heitkamp early this year, changed his mind after a multiple attempts by Trump, including a White House dinner with Cramer and his wife, to recruit him. “He begged me,” Cramer told the AP last week.
Cramer has used the sales job to portray himself as close to the president in a state where Trump’s ap- proval runs well ahead of his national rating.
“She can’t use my support for the Trump agenda against me,” he said. “She’s essentially saying ‘vote for me because I’m going to be like Kevin.’ I’m telling voters to vote for me because I am Kevin.”
But Heitkamp said no one agrees with Trump all of the time, even in North Dakota.
“Do I want to have a relationship so I can pick up the phone and talk about things like farm policy, trade policy? Yeah. I think that’s in the best interest of North Dakota,” she said. “I say if you want someone who is going to vote with the president 100 percent of the time, that’s not going to be me. Because I don’t think he’s 100 percent right.”
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Associated Press writer James MacPherson in Bismarck, North Dakota, contributed to this report.
Trump trades easy banter with allies but differences persist By CATHERINE LUCEY and ROB GILLIES, Associated Press
LA MALBAIE, Quebec (AP) — President Donald Trump charged into the Group of Seven summit at odds with key allies over U.S. tariffs, then set out to defuse tension with friendly banter and offered vague claims of progress in trade talks. But details were scant and clear differences remained at the summit’s midpoint.
After days of verbal sparring over new U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, Trump joined the leaders of major industrialized nations in an idyllic Canadian resort town. On his way to the annual gather- ing, Trump laid out his fundamental grievance, saying that other countries “have been taking advantage of the United States on trade.”