SALON

Monday, Nov 5, 2012 1:56 PM UTC

New oil workers key bloc in ND Senate race

Heidi Heitkamp and Rick Berg are fighting for the votes of North Dakota's energy workers

By

Topics: Heidi Heitkamp, 2012 Elections, Rick Berg, Oil, From the Wires, North Dakota, , ,

New oil workers key bloc in ND Senate raceIn this Oct. 29, 2012 photo, Patty Caldwell, right, and her daughter, Amanda Caldwell, stand outside the Dunn County courthouse in Manning, N.D., shortly after they voted early for the Nov. 6 election. (AP Photo/Dale Wetzel)

MANNING, N.D. (AP) — Shirley Meyer grew up on a ranch north of Dickinson, N.D., and has represented her rural district in the state House for a decade. But when she knocks on doors in her re-election campaign, she sometimes feels like a stranger in her own home.

“I was just shocked at how many new people there were,” Meyer said during a recent campaign swing through a south Dickinson mobile home park. “I didn’t see one North Dakota (license) plate.”

The oil boom that has transformed North Dakota’s economy and reshaped the rolling prairie landscape has also added an element of mystery to next week’s election by adding thousands of potential new voters to the region’s tiny electorate. And the political suspense is tied to the national question of which party controls the Senate in January.

North Dakota’s contest is one of several states with Senate contests that have remained tied for months, with no signs of clarifying before Tuesday’s election. A handful of them, such as Montana’s Senate race one state west, may not even be resolved then.

Republicans are still looking to gain four seats they need to win the Senate majority if President Barack Obama wins reelection, three if GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney prevails.

Workers from all over the country have pouring into western North Dakota for jobs in the booming Bakken oil shale region. Dickinson, a city of 16,000 that didn’t grow at all between 1990 and 2000, is now surging past 20,000 residents, with acres of new temporary housing. By one state measure, the number of oilfield workers has increased from 5,600 to 14,000 since the last presidential election. And many of the new arrivals are eligible to vote.

What that means for North Dakota politics, or individual candidates, is anyone’s guess.

“I’m just hoping that I have enough ballots,” said Joan Hollekim, the county auditor in Mountrail County, North Dakota’s biggest oil producer. She increased her ballot printing order by 25 percent, and already has more than 600 early votes, a record.

Beth Innis, the auditor in neighboring Williams County, said she’s already booked more than 2,500 absentee votes, which is double what she expected.

“I thought it would be big,” Innis said of the rising number of voters. “I didn’t think it would be this big.”

In North Dakota, the only state that does not have voter registration, any citizen over 18 who has lived in the same place for at least 30 days can cast a ballot. That would include oilfield workers who may actually be living elsewhere and commute home to see their families.

Democrat Heidi Heitkamp and Republican Rick Berg are both pitching hard for the votes of North Dakota’s energy workers. In a final campaign swing this week, Berg visited an oilfield trucking service company, a natural gas processing plant and a coal mine in western North Dakota.

Heitkamp talks up her advocacy for North Dakota’s oil and coal industries when she served as state attorney general and tax commissioner. In one of her television ads, she speaks over the noise of a passing train of oil tanker cars while promising to support development of a new North Dakota refinery to process crude.

The oil industry is making sure its work force knows how to participate. A recent newsletter from the North Dakota Petroleum Council instructed workers who live in recreational vehicles or “skid shacks”— tiny huts, often no larger than a single-car garage, which can be hauled on flatbed trailers — how to request mail ballots.

The Brighter Future Alliance, a nonprofit group with ties to prominent North Dakota Republicans, has conducted voter information workshops in several of the temporary housing camps dotted throughout western North Dakota.

“We have focused on what we think is a critical thing for the country, and that is to pursue domestic energy supplies…” said Shane Goettle, an alliance official and former aide to Republican Sen. John Hoeven. “I think they can well be motivated to show up.”

It’s unclear how many new workers will vote.

Patty Caldwell, who started cleaning trailer houses at North Dakota oil well drilling sites more than a year ago to stave off foreclosure of her home in Oregon, said she wanted to make her voice heard.

“I just figured that I’m part of this community now,” said Caldwell, whose company is in New Hradec, a hamlet about 10 miles north of Dickinson. “I have friends here. There’s issues that I’m concerned about.”

Monty Leonard, who drives a truck for a company that hauls water for the oil industry, came here from Oklahoma two years ago. He is casting his first vote in North Dakota.

Leonard said he has been following the presidential campaign, but is not familiar with the North Dakota candidates.

“I haven’t been here very long, so I don’t know the people,” Leonard said of the candidates.

The potential magnitude of the oilfield vote — if it votes — is clearly visible. Across the area, rows of temporary trailers are plunked in the middle of brown, treeless pastures, while smoke-belching earth movers prepare space for new housing developments and business construction.

This year, as many as 4,300 new voters have been added to a state voter database in the nine largest oil-producing counties. That’s more people than live in 26 of North Dakota’s 53 counties, and a significant number in a state where 160,000 votes could elect either Berg or Heitkamp in their closely fought race.

Almost 533,000 North Dakotans are eligible to vote, a 7 percent increase since the last presidential election, the state Commerce Department says.

Meyer, a Democrat, said she has tried to “hit the new areas” in her re-election campaign.

She said some of the workers had absentee ballot paperwork.

“The vast majority of them that I visited with said, ‘We work 16 hours a day, and we have no intention of voting” in North Dakota, she said.

Other lawmakers said they doubted the new residents would be rushing to the polls.

“I don’t think they’re going to influence (election results) a lot for the local stuff. They’re really just doing their work, and sending money home to their families,” said state Rep. Bob Skarphol, a Republican from Tioga.

More Dale Wetzel.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
280 points281 points | 60 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
252 points253 points | 10 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
198 points199 points | 1 comment
vote
Today in How Did I Miss This: Iowa GOP is pushing to cut the pay of the remaining Supreme Court Justices that voted for legalization of gay marriage.
87 points88 points | 10 comments
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
55 points56 points | 8 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations