After losing a state gubernatorial race in 2000, North Dakota senator Heidi Heitkamp (D) had better luck in 2012. Running for statewide office for the first time since that 2000 loss to now-senator John Hoeven (R), Heitkamp defeated Republican challenger Rick Berg in one of the narrowest Senate elections of the year. Heitkamp won by less than one percent of the vote, and the race was eligible for a recount until Berg conceded the following morning.
Before running for governor of North Dakota, Heitkamp served as the state’s Attorney General for eight years. Her most notable achievement was the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, which brought nearly $340 million to the state for a successful program to reduce teen smoking and support education. In between campaigns for public office, Heitkamp spent twelve years as the director of the Dakota Gasification plant, working on developing synthetic fuels. During her senatorial campaign, Heitkamp made energy a priority and ran on a promise to create and keep high-paying jobs in North Dakota’s energy industry.
Unlike fellow senator Hoeven, Heitkamp came from humble upbringings. Raised in Mantador, North Dakota, she and her six brothers and sisters all began working as soon as they could. According to her campaign website, Heitkamp worked myriad jobs to pay her way through high school and college. At different times, Heitkamp worked as a babysitter, waitress, and construction worker. While Hoeven went to Dartmouth, Heitkamp earned her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of North Dakota and later graduated from Lewis and Clark Law School.
Heitkamp’s victory was surprising in strongly conservative North Dakota, which Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won by over twenty points. The senator is not a staunch liberal in the Harry Reid mode, however. Heitkamp has been identified by newly-elected Indiana senator Joe Donnelly as part of a rising moderate Democratic coalition in the Senate and was given an “A” rating by the National Rifle Association. She was not shy about criticizing President Barack Obama’s decision to postpone the Keystone Pipeline, calling it “the wrong one, plain and simple.”
Heitkamp has not been solidly conservative or liberal on social issues. While she has a top rating from the NRA and she opposes public abortion funding, she has not come out solidly for or against gay marriage (she opines that it should be left to the states) and her second largest campaign contributor was Planned Parenthood, perhaps indicative of a future ideological swing on the issue of abortion. When it comes to gun control, Heitkamp stresses it is key to address mental health in the effort to curb violent shootings but came out against the measures proposed by the Obama Administration. In an ABC interview, the senator went as far as to say that “if the Washington Post is to be believed, [those proposals] are way in extreme of what I think is necessary or even should be talked about.”
While Heitkamp’s victory was unexpected, the victory is not an unqualified one for the Democratic party. Her views on gun control lie right of center, and her support for the Keystone Pipeline may alienate ecologically-concerned colleagues. However, as part of a rising moderate coalition in the Senate, Heitkamp may provide some balance in the midst of ideological struggles over national debt and government budgets that have cut divides deep across the Senate floor. Her presence moved Democrats closer to the supermajority they held four years ago, but whether she will assist in advancing a liberal agenda has yet to be seen.