The Prairie Blog

There’s talk in the Legislature about getting us new license plates. We’ve had the same one for 20 years, so it’s natural someone in the Legislative or Executive branch of state government would be getting antsy about getting new ones. We’ve never gone so long without changing plates before. In the early days of automobile travel in North Dakota, from the time we issued our first plates in 1911 until about 1959, we issued new plates every year, and they changed the color every year so it was easy for a patrolman to spot a car with expired plates.

Starting in 1959, we began issuing stickers to affix to the plates, and from then until 1993, we changed designs every four or five years. In the early 1980s we had red, white and blue plate with a montage of a bunch of North Dakota icons on it, a plate that was generally disliked by most North Dakotans. Our excuse for dumping it was that we had a centennial approaching and we wanted a new centennial license plate. Motor Vehicle Registrar Bruce Larson and his staff came up with a color scheme pretty much like the one we have now, gold on the bottom and blue on the top. With the word “Centennial” stamped on it above the letters and numbers.

By 1991, the centennial was a couple years gone, and it was time for a new design. Bruce favored keeping the same color scheme, just getting rid of the Centennial reference. Those were my State Tourism Director days, and I decided to stick my nose in the process. Bruce and I were good friends. We had been through some political wars together, and Bud Sinner, upon his election as Governor in 1984, had hired us to run a couple state agencies. I guess one of our perks was working on new license plates. I’m surprised our successors in the Schafer, Hoeven and Dalrymple administration haven’t taken advantage of it.

Bruce liked the color scheme we were using in 1991, and I did too, but he wondered if the Tourism office had any interest in using the license plate to promote the state. Well, sure, I said. I’ve even got an idea. My friend Burt Calkins, one of our state’s better-known artists, had done a western North Dakota landscape during our state’s centennial year of 1989. It was a watercolor of a buffalo in the foreground and Sentinel Butte in the background. He called it “Two Sentinels.” I showed it to Bruce, and said it could easily be adapted into the blue and gold motif of the current plate. Bruce liked the idea, but was a little gunshy about the buffalo part. We had just gone through Frank and Deborah Popper’s Buffalo Commons scheme and he was afraid it would trigger a negative response, even though we agreed most North Dakotans would, like us, be proud to be identified with a buffalo image, a real image of the Old West.

Bruce (a wheat farmer by profession) suggested we put a stalk or two of wheat on it along with the buffalo to recognize our “rich agricultural heritage.” I thought that was a pretty good compromise, and I also suggested we put our tourism marketing slogan, “Discover the Spirit,” at the top in kind of a cloud-like font. So we sent a check to Burt (not a very big one, as I recall) gave the painting and our tourism logo to the folks at the 3M company who did the license plate designs for a number of states, and they brought back some sample designs, among which was the design we have used for the last 20 years.

I believe the Legislature had appropriated the money to make the new plates to be issued in 1993. I know we rushed the process as fast as we could because we had no idea what the next governor would think of our design, and we knew we’d be gone by the beginning of 1993. Turns out we didn’t have to worry. New Governor Ed Schafer liked the design so much he used it for his campaign material, sans buffalo, numbers and letters.

I’m frankly surprised it has lasted this long. I know that the Registrar subsequent to Bruce, though, entered it in the “new license plate design” contest that held by the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association (click on the link to see past ND license plates) and it won the prize for best license plate design in 1993, the first year it was issued. It was one of the first plates to really incorporate artwork into the design, a trend which has gained traction nationwide now. But the slogan “Discover the Spirit,” which we adopted when I became Tourism Director in 1985, has long been dismissed in favor of “Legendary.” Still, people like the color scheme, and I think that is why it has remained.

So, my choice would be to issue everyone who needs one—I do, mine has been on at least six different cars and is pretty well bent out of shape–a new plate, but keep the “Two Sentinels” design. Okay to get rid of “Discover the Spirit” I guess, although Tracy Potter, Greg Ness, Guido Hanson and I are pretty proud of it—it’s been around in one incarnation or another since 1987, when we adopted it as our tourism slogan. That makes it pretty legendary.

Okay, Day 32 on our quest to stay warm this winter under the guise of seeing national parks, dead presidents’ graves, and dead authors’ houses. We’ve seen a bunch of each of them, and with another 30 days, at least, to go, we’re going to see a bunch more.

For the record, right now we are visiting family in the Birmingham, Alabama area, after having camped at St. George’s Island on the Florida panhandle, south of Tallahassee and east of Pensacola for a few days. Initially I thought we would stop and spend some time in the Pensacola area on our way here, a place where I was stationed briefly, twice, during my Navy days in the late 1960’s. But we’ve got such good karma going right now that we didn’t want to even think about revisiting those days, or the place that was my last stop before the Gulf of Tonkin. So, it’s Alabama for the weekend, with Lillian’s aunt and uncle.

Lillian’s dad was born and raised in the south, and all of his living brothers and sisters, now mostly in their 80’s, are still here, as are their offspring. We’ve spent the night with one cousin, and one aunt and uncle, and as we continue traveling through Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, we’ll stay with a few more. I’m looking forward to it because of what Lillian said at breakfast yesterday morning: “Tonight’s the last night we have to sleep on the ground for a while.” And because these southern women make really good biscuits. From here we head for Nashville and Memphis (Yep, The Ryman and Graceland), then to Arkansas for a visit with a college roommate. Then we’ll head on to the Texas Gulf Coast to see the whooping cranes. We’re going to spend a lot of nights camping in Texas. A lot. Probably most of February.

Notes from the Captain’s Log on January 26, 2013 (I call myself Captain because I have been doing most of the driving while Lillian navigates. Not just because it’s a male thing, or that I’m a better driver, it’s just that I am a lousy navigator, and we seem to get where we are supposed to be much better with Lillian navigating):

• Days on the road:  This is Day 32. We left December 26.
• Miles driven : 5,279. We’re averaging about 25 miles per gallon in the Outback, so we’ve used about 210 gallons of gas.  Average gas price has been about $3.25, so we’ve spent close to $750 on gas, far less than we’ve spent on food and lodging, in spite of how many nights we have camped. Food is our biggest expense. A big part of our vacations is always enjoying the local cuisine, and we’ve been consuming seafood at a record pace, both across the campground picnic tables and in local eateries. Lillian said the other night “It is impossible to eat too much shrimp.”  Or, it turns out, oysters. We just left the Apalachicola Bay, where most of America’s fresh oysters come from. Our maître d’ the other night told us that the Bay wasn’t slicked by BP’s spill, and the oysters are oil-free. Not only that, but they are delicious. We’ll eat more along the Gulf as we proceed on. And some more shrimp too, I expect.
• Cheapest Gas: $2.99 a gallon in Fargo, North Dakota. Most expensive we saw was about $3.69 on a few islands.
  • States visited: 14. The Dakotas, the “I” states (Iowa, Illinois and Indiana), Ohio, the Virginias (real and West), the Carolinas, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida and Alabama. We’ve actually spent an overnight in all of them except Illinois and Indiana. We’ve camped in only four: the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, but for pretty long stretches in them.
  • National Park Service sites we’ve visited: 18 for me, 19 for Lillian (I skipped Castillo de San Marcos National Monument and spent half a day at the World Golf Hall of Fame, in St. Augustine, FL, where both are located). Five of them are full-fledged National Parks: Cuyahoga, Congaree, Great Smoky Mountains, Dry Tortugas and Everglades. The rest are National Monuments, National Historic Sites, etc., all managed by the National Park Service. There are almost 400 NPS sites in our country, about 60 of them National Parks. North Dakota has three: Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and Knife River Indian Villages and Fort Union National Historic Sites. We’re on a mission to do all the National Parks before we die. We might die trying.
  • National Park Highlights: We like them all, some way better than others. Dry Tortugas, with its historic Fort Jefferson, wins so far. Fort Jefferson, constructed from the 1840’s to the 1880’s, is a ten acre brick and concrete fort occupying all but six acres of a tiny island which is Dry Tortugas National Park. The remaining six acres of the island are taken up by boat docks, fishing docks, a storage area and a small campground (five primitive sites). The 16-acre island is located 70 miles west of Key West, reachable by float plane or a 3-hour ferry ride (we chose the ferry so we could take our camping gear). The ferry delivered about 150 of us for the four-hour visit to the island, then 143 of them went back to Key West and seven of us stayed behind for an overnight experience. We camped in the sand. The island has no eating facilities and no fresh water. We took cold supper and breakfast and a couple gallons of water, plus some other liquid refreshments. We swam in 72 degree water until a cold front blowing in from the north (the one that left snow in Alabama) drove us up onto the beach. Our hoped for starriest-sky-ever-night hopes were dashed by the front, which kept the skies cloudy all night and much of the next day. The trip back to Key West featured 4 to 6 foot rollers, which kept Lillian on her feet on the back deck for the three hour trip. She arrived back in Key West with her stomach intact. We capped off the day with sushi on the dock as the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico. In spite of the weather and nasty seas, it was probably our best 36-hour trip ever.
  • National Park Sites Runners-Up: We camped in chilly Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where we also hiked on the Appalachian Trail and drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway, both of which are administered by the NPS. We saw a lot of alligators in the Everglades National Park. We saw what 15,000 books look like in one house at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. And we got a wonderful history of the end of the Civil War at Appomattox Courthouse.
  • Non-NPS Highlights:
    • The Avett Brothers concert in Greensboro, NC, on New Year’s Eve. It started with an opening act at 8 p.m. and ended in a raucous encore by the Avetts at 12:45 a.m.
    • A day at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Every old rocker’s dream.
    • The pork chop sandwich at The Snappy Lunch Café in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, Andy Griffith’s home town. It’s a deep fried porkchop that overwhelms a hamburger bun and serves as a full meal. Beyond that, it is so good I cannot describe it. Neither, I suspect, could Andy, other than saying “Golllllllleeeee!”
    • Standing in front of Sam Snead’s locker at the World Golf Hall of Fame. (And to think Lillian missed that!)
    • Thomas Jefferson’s outdoor biffy—the real deal—at Poplar Forest, Jefferson’s second home and plantation getaway in western Virginia.
    • Fresh oysters. Two dozen as appetizers before a fish supper in Charleston, two and a half dozen in Florida.
    • Fresh shrimp. Everywhere.

Lillian brought a book along called “Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West,” (National Geographic, 2008), which has taken us to the homes of many dead authors, and will take us to many more. We’ve seen either the birthplaces or homes of Flannery O’Connor in Savannah, the already-mentioned Carl Sandburg in Flat Rock, North Carolina, Ernest Hemingway in Key West, Harper Lee and Truman Capote in Monroeville, Alabama, and F. Scott Fitzgerald in Montgomery, Alabama. Still on our schedule are Eudora Welty in Jackson, Mississippi, William Faulkner in Oxford Mississippi (and maybe John Grisham’s too, although he’s not dead yet), and O. Henry and Katherine Ann Porter in Texas. Anyone taking a car trip anywhere in the U.S. should get this book and take it along. It gives you excellent background on the authors, their homes and landmarks, and phone numbers, addresses and hours of operation of the places you’ll want to visit.

Here’s a couple other things I’ve noticed along the way.

• Most states do a much better job than North Dakota does of paying attention to, and paying notice to, their favorite sons and daughters, natural landmarks and architectural and engineering accomplishments. Highways and bridges buildings and lakes and parks are named for local heroes, such as politicians, statesmen, athletes and movie stars. North Dakotans are not naturally boastful people, but as Dizzy Dean used to say, “It ain’t bragging if you done it.” Most states also tell you the names of rivers, creeks and streams you are crossing with green road signs, and we don’t do a good job of that either. More about that idea in a future blog post.
• North Dakota is about the only state left which does not have logo signs on the Interstate. Logo signs are those blue signs on the shoulder as you approach an off ramp with the logos of the gas stations, restaurants and motels you can expect to find when you get off the freeway. We don’t have them in our state because Harold Newman, owner of Newman Signs, and his sales crew, have done an excellent job of lobbying the North Dakota Legislature to make them illegal here ever since they were authorized by the U.S. government back when I was tourism director, contending that they compete with the outdoor sign industry and discourage billboard advertising. I really like Harold, and his general manager, Dean Anderson, and we finally just agreed to disagree on this issue after we took a couple runs at allowing them in the 1980’s. Harold still sends his sales team in to monitor the Legislature every session just in case someone gets an idea to revive this in North Dakota, but so far they have dodged that bullet. I bet tourists wandering through our state wonder why we don’t have them.

So, that’s the update after our first month on the road. Right now, I can tell by smell wafting up the staircase that Aunt Fran’s biscuits are about to come out of the oven, so I’ll quit. You don’t want to be late for Aunt Fran’s biscuits. Lillian is pretty much documenting us on Facebook, so if you’re interested in photos, you can find them on her Facebook page.  I mean, doesn’t everyone like to sit and look at vacation photos of their friends and relatives?

Well, 12 days on the road with spouse Lillian, approaching 3,000 miles on the odometer, and we find ourselves in the lap of luxury at the Inn at The Biltmore in Asheville, NC, built and managed by the descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who endowed Vanderbilt University, where Lillian did her graduate work. It hasn’t always been so.

While Lillian has dreamed of spending time here since her days at Vanderbilt, and touring the 250-room Vanderbilt mansion, she paid her dues by spending the last two nights in a tent in the Great Smoky Mountains in sub-freezing weather. A well-designed bed consisting of four air mattresses and a number of down-filled coverings kept us warm and comfortable—until we had to emerge into the frigid morning air. But it could’ve been worse, and we dearly love the outdoor experience, partly because we always know that down the road we get to eat and sleep like our wealthier relatives and friends once in a while. That’s tonight. She’s blissfully watching the season premiere of “Downton Abbey” while I catch up on reading and writing. We’re both happy.

Here’s the tally. We’ve visited ten states, slept in seven of them, and checked in at 13 sites administered by the National Park Service, if you count three “trails” they maintain and on which we have spent minimal time: The Appalachian Trail, the Trail of Tears, and the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Highlights: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, which is NOT an NPS site; an Avett Brothers New Year’s Eve extravaganza which ended with them still playing at 12:45 a.m., one of the better rock concerts I’ve been to, and certainly one of the most high-energy performances I’ve ever seen; Thomas Jefferson’s plantation retreat in western Virginia, Poplar Forest; and the historically complete interpretation of the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Courthouse. And two days on mountain roads and trails in the Great Smokies.

We’re grateful to a couple of rich families for great experiences so far: The
Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts. There was a time in America when the rich did great things for their country. John D. Rockefeller put up half the money for the purchase of the land which is now Great Smoky Mountains National Park, now the most-visited national park in America, with more than 9 million visitors per year. Rockefeller, of course also was the patron of Grand Teton National Park. The Vanderbilts gave us this majestic 8,000 acre estate in which we are staying tonight.  It’s not hard to think of Harold Schafer as I write this, who gave us Medora, at the gateway of another of our great parks, Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota’s Bad Lands. There was a time in our history when the wealthy did great things for our country, instead of spending millions trying to influence politicians to pass legislation to make them even richer. They remembered the words of Luke, and of JFK, about those to whom much is given, much is to be expected. Times, and rich people, are different now.

Tomorrow, for the first time, we are going to a place where the first number in the temperature will be 5, as we head to South Carolina. It will keep going up from there. From now on we will do as we please. We have no hotel reservations until February 18 at Big Bend National Park in Texas. From now on, we will decide from day to day whether to stay where we are or move on. We have another dozen national parks to visit. We have some more dead presidents’ memorials to observe. We’ve promised to visit a bunch of Lillian’s cousins, aunts and uncles in several southern states. We’ll see Slim and Mavis Williamson and David Strauss in Florida. Whooping cranes are waiting for us at Corpus Christie. Paul Ohm has his doors open near Tuscon. We’ll head for home when we approach our personal fiscal cliff.

I’ll report back in from the ocean, whenever that happens. Until then, we’re posting updates on Facebook. Stay tuned.

With apologies to Meriwether Lewis:

“Our vessel consists of a Subaru Outback. This little vehicle, although not quite so respectable as those of Columbus or Capt. Cook, is still viewed by us with as much pleasure as those deservedly famed adventurers ever beheld theirs; and I dare to say with quite as much anxiety for their safety and preservation.  We are now about to penetrate a country at least two thousand miles in width, on which the foot of many North Dakotans have never trodden; the good or evil it has in store for us is for experiment yet to determine, and this little vessel contains every article by which we are to expect to subsist or defend ourselves.”

The major difference between the Lewis and Clark Expedition’s departure on April 7, 1805 and the Fuglie and Crook Expedition’s departure today, December 26, 2012, is one of direction. They went west—we’re going east. First stop for Lillian (Lewis) and Jim (Clark): Cleveland, on Saturday, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame where the current special exhibits are the Grateful Dead, the Beatles and a U2 3D film (imagine Bono sitting on your lap), then on to Greensboro, North Carolina for a New year‘s Eve bash with the Avett Brothers in their home state. Then waaaaay south to the Florida Keys, a couple weeks in Florida, then back north to Nashville and the Country Music Hall of Fame (special exhibits Patsy Cline and the Bakersfield Sound, featuring Buck Owens and Merle Haggard). From Nashville, after a stop in Hope, Arkansas, back south to Corpus Christie, for a date with the whooping cranes, then on to birders’ heaven—Big Bend National Park—for most of a week of birding. Finally, to Tuscon, visits with friends, and then home sometime in early March. 22 states in all, and about that many national parks scratched off our checklist. Perhaps a stop in Colorado (heh heh) on our way back north. No, we’re not taking orders.

On the home front, at Red Oak House in Bismarck, Lizzie and Chelsea stand guard, watched over by the eyes of a dozen or so friends, relatives and neighbors who have provided phone numbers in case the snow drifts get too deep or the toilet overflows. Ferocious Lizzie will make sure no unwanted visitors enter the house, and Chelsea has a long single-spaced “to do” list which will keep her busy all winter, with any help she needs just a phone call away. The best offer: “Tell Chelsea to call my brother if she needs anything. He doesn’t know how to do anything, but he knows who to call.”

We’ll try to keep you posted on our whereabouts. Next post likely:  “Ocean in sight! Oh, the joy!”

This just in (Fortune magazine October 1948, page 29):

“Barring a major political miracle, Governor Thomas E. Dewey will be elected the thirty-fourth President of the United States in November. Such is the overwhelming evidence of Elmo Roper’s fifth pre-election Survey in recent months, the last that will appear this year in Fortune.

            “So decisive are the figures given here this month that Fortune, and Mr. Roper, plan no further detailed reports on the change of opinion in the forthcoming presidential campaign unless some development of outstanding importance occurs. This decision was taken only after careful consideration, and it is in keeping with the original objectives of the Fortune Survey. The Fortune Survey was established not to chart the week-by-week changes in public opinion but to uncover important underlying attitudes, the real sources of decisive changes in public opinion.

            “The findings of this current Survey come as no surprise. They merely reinforce and confirm the results of the four preceding public-opinion polls conducted between April and August of this year. All of them indicated that in the election to come Mr. Dewey will pile up a popular majority only slightly less than that accumulated by Mr. Roosevelt in 1936 when he swept the boards against Alf Landon. The results of the current Survey show no decisive difference from the four previous ones: Mr. Dewey is shown to be leading Mr. Truman by the almost unbeatable margin of 44 per cent to 31 per cent . . . Mr. Truman, in his uphill, desperate struggle for re-election, is swimming against a strong current. The people have pretty much made up their minds on the men, and thus the issues of the election take second place.”   

This just in (The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, October 19, 2012, page one):

“FARGO — Republican U.S. Rep. Rick Berg is leading Democrat Heidi Heitkamp 50 percent to 40 percent — with 10 percent still undecided — in North Dakota’s U.S. Senate race, according to a poll conducted for Forum Communications Co. The poll, conducted by Essman/Research, has Berg leading former Democratic Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp, 50 percent to 40 percent. Ten percent of respondents say they remain undecided.”

            Below is a statement from Berg for Senate spokesman Chris Van Guilder from an October 23 press release:

“It is clear that North Dakotans continue to reject Heidi Heitkamp’s campaign of false and negative personal attacks and are focused on the big issues of this election. As Heitkamp continues to run a personal smear campaign, we are encouraged by the positive response to Rick Berg’s commitment to repealing Obamacare, standing up to President Obama’s failed policies, and working with Senator John Hoeven to balance the budget and put our country back on track.”

We know the rest of the story, of course. Truman and Heitkamp both won. There’s a lesson here, maybe: don’t discount the undecideds. Twenty five per cent in the Roper poll, 10 per cent in the Forum poll, and all (or most in Truman’s case) apparently went with the underdog. Or maybe the lesson is, don’t discount America’s feelings for the underdog.

This was all triggered by my coming across a copy of the October 1948 issue of Fortune magazine. And paging through it, I noted the Dewey-Truman story, and thought of the Heidi-Rick campaign. In both cases, the media outlet involved, Fortune and Forum, wanted the results their pollsters were predicting, and jumped ahead of their good senses to pretty much call the election for their favorite son. Fortune all but endorsed Dewey. The Forum endorsed Rick Berg. Both were pretty sure they were endorsing the winner. Both, of course, were wrong.

I am reminded of my very first election in North Dakota as a journalist. It was 1972, and I was working at The Dickinson Press. Shortly before Election Day, the editor called me into his office and announced that he was about to write his endorsement editorial for the Governor’s race, which featured then-Congressman Art Link against then-Lieutenant Governor Richard Larsen. He said something like “You seem to know a lot about North Dakota politics. Who do you think we should endorse?”  Well, I made a brief case for Art Link, although I can’t really remember the gist of it. He said “I think I’m going to endorse Larsen.” I asked why. He said “Well, this is my first endorsement, and I want to get it right, and I think Larsen is going to win. So I’m going to endorse him.” And he did. And, of course, he was wrong. Link won in an upset, and went on to become a North Dakota legend, perhaps our most-respected Governor ever. Truman, too, went on to become an American legend and a highly-respected ex-president. As for Heitkamp, well, we’ll see, but don’t bet against her ever again.

Memo to media outlets: Endorsements are okay, if they are done for the right reason. The right reason is not “Because I think he is going to win.”

I didn’t read about this in the Bismarck Tribune. I didn’t see it on KXMB or KFYR’s 6 o’clock news, and I didn’t hear it on Joel Heitkamp’s News and Views radio show. Apparently it wasn’t very big news here. But I just knew that there was a story out there, and I couldn’t get to the bottom of it. No one was reporting it. It was a mystery. Something was missing in my life and no one knew where it went.

Then, Saturday, I went to the mall. I’m not a regular mall-goer. I go once a year, and Saturday was the day. Christmas shopping. And my route took me right past Northwoods Candy Emporium. Aha, I thought, here I might find the answer. I went in and looked down each aisle, No luck. But I was the only one in the store at the moment, and so I mustered up all my courage and walked up to the fellow minding the store, and said “You probably know more about candy than anyone in Bismarck. I have a question.” He shrugged his shoulders modestly and said “What can I do for you?”

“What happened to Snaps®?”

“Well, they’ve been recalled,” was the reply. “They found lead in them or something like that.”

Huh. Bam. Just like that. Snaps® recalled. How can it be? Is nothing sacred? Lead? How do you get lead in Snaps®?

And then, a cold sweat. Lead? How much lead? My God, I must have eaten a hundred thousand Snaps® in my lifetime. Lead? Could that explain why my weight keeps creeping up? Do I have big lump of lead in my belly somewhere. Kind of looks like it, when I stand sideways to a mirror. Lead is bad. I don’t use lead shotgun shells any more. Paint with lead in it can’t be sold any more. But lead in Snaps? How could that be? And why didn’t I know about it?

I’m serious about a hundred thousand Snaps®. It’s one of my dirty little secrets. Lillian knows I like them, but she has no idea how many of them I eat. Or used to. I’ve been buying them for more than 50 years, ever since they sold for two cents in a little red cardboard box at Dale’s Variety Store in Hettinger. There were probably 20 of them in a box. And man, I bought a lot of boxes. My taste for Snaps® never went away, especially the white ones. Some of my friends said the pink ones were best, but I always liked the white ones. What, you say, they all taste the same? Hardly! I guarantee you I can close my eyes and pop a Snap® in my mouth and tell you if it is a white one or not. Anyone know what the other colors are? First correct answer in the comments section below get a free bag from me when, or if, they come back (the manufacturer, the American Licorice Company, has promised their return by the end of the year).

The two-cent box went the way of all penny candy sometime in my youth, replaced by a nickel bag, then a quarter bag (the same size, I think) and lately, until August of this year, a  bag weighing four or five ounces, I suppose, for a couple bucks. Oh, yeah, and a theater box that costs about seventeen dollars.

So what happened in August? Well, apparently a scientist at the California Department of Public Health, during a routine test, found an unacceptably high level of lead in black licorice candy manufactured by American Licorice. Unacceptable meaning more than .1 part per million. Lead is very bad stuff if it is consumed by humans and other living things. The CDPH notified American Licorice and the company issued a voluntary recall. Here’s what they had to say:

On 8/22, we were notified by the California Dept. of Public Health (CDPH) that they had detected trace amounts of lead in one batch of our black licorice (16 oz. Bags of Black Licorice Twists with “Best Before Date 020413” printed on the label) that exceeded the amount of lead that they deem safe for candy products.

At that time we issued a voluntary product recall of this batch of licorice and immediately launched an extensive internal investigation to get to the root of the issue, including additional testing of our raw ingredients, products, equipment and water lines, in an attempt to identify what caused the elevated levels of lead. Our testing suggests that slightly elevated levels of lead above the recommended maximum levels of lead for young children may also be found in some recent batches of Red Vines Black Licorice Twists, Family Mix, Mixed Bites and Snaps. No detectable lead was found in recent testing of Sugar Free Black Licorice.

 I noticed that they were gone right away, although I didn’t know why Snaps® had disappeared. You see, to this day, I still bought Snaps® pretty regularly. I always had a hard time finding them. But the CENEX station on West Divide Avenue had them hanging on their candy rack, and I usually ducked in a bought a bag when I filled up with gas. About once a week. I liked to munch on them when I was making my rounds as the ranger at the Bismarck public golf courses. And I often took them on my canoe and camping trips, when I was going to be out on the river or trail more than a day or two. Because not only do I like Snaps®, but they have some medicinal qualities, for me at least, as well. The black licorice helps keep me regular, if you know what I mean, on those forays into the outdoors.

Well, one day last summer, the rack at CENEX contained no Snaps®. And then the next time I went to get gas, and the next time, and I kept checking in there every time I got gas, but no Snaps®. And I never knew why, until the candy store clerk in the mall told me Saturday.

Now, it looks like there is good news ahead. Here’s what’s on American Licorice’s website right now, dated October 25:

Dear Consumers,

We are happy to share that Red Vines® Family Mix and Red Vines® Black Licorice Twist items began shipping to retailers on October 22^nd and will be available on the shelves of your favorite stores in mid- to-late November.  We are planning for Snaps® to be back on shelves later this year.

Since initiating the recall in August we’ve worked closely with the FDA, significantly increasing the depth and frequency of our internal quality testing, tightening our standards with ingredient suppliers and launching an extensive internal investigation of ingredients, equipment, and finished products.

As a result of the investigation, the FDA has classified the recall as a Class II, meaning that the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote, and initial health hazard evaluations for Red Vines® Black Licorice and Snaps® found that health risks from consuming black licorice with slightly elevated levels of lead are negligible.

You can learn about the FDA’s recall classification system at the link below:

http://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls/ucm165546.htm

We greatly appreciate your support for our company and products over the years and deeply value your loyalty.  We will continue our dedication to making delicious candy with a goal of always being better tomorrow than we are today.

Best, American Licorice Company

The candy store guy at the mall says he hasn’t been notified when he’ll get his new supply. When he does, he’ll sell them in bulk from his jars, like he does a hundred or so other kinds of candy. He’s going to be my new friend. Because I’m not sure, but my guess is that they’ll be cheaper there than they are in pre-packaged bags at Cenex. Looks like I’ll be going to the mall more than once a year now.

The headline blaring across the top of page 1B of the Bismarck Tribune Wednesday morning read “Oil Production Sets Record.” Note to Tribune editors: Just leave that page layout on your computer screen, and insert new numbers a month from today. The headline will still apply. And the month after that, and after that . . .

Which reminds me of a time in the 1970’s when I was employed at the Dickinson Press. Spain’s dictator leader, Generalisimo (I’m not sure where that title came from, but it sticks in my head) Francisco Franco, an aged icon known worldwide, who ruled Spain with an iron fist, fell into a coma and was kept going on life support for quite a long time.  I was the news editor at the paper, and it was my job each night to put the paper together—choose the stories which would go into the paper, decide where the stories would go, lay out the pages and write the headlines. When Franco fell ill, the Associated Press sent a story over the wire that said the general was nearing the end. It was important news—he was a world leader—and so I chose to run the story, although an abbreviated version, and on an insignificant inside page, one with a  lot of standing features, such as stock markets, grain markets, weather and sometimes a smattering of national or international news—a page where I often shoved a story of some national significance, because even small-town daily newspapers took themselves seriously in those days, as their community’s main source of information before 24-hour cable news channels and all the Internet news sources—but in which very few people were really interested. And so, the paper the next morning carried a one column, four-inch long story under the headline “Franco Hovers Near Death.”

Well, he didn’t die that day, but he didn’t improve either, and so the next night, the AP sent a slightly updated version of the Franco story. I was looking at it and noting that there was really nothing new in it, when my friend and colleague Bill Douthit said “Well, just leave the headline in the same place and put the new story under it.” So we did. We called those things “standing headlines” in those days. Told the staff in the back shop to just let the headline stand, and we’d send new copy. And so they did, that night, and the next night, and the next night, and it became a standing joke in the newsroom, and my editor and publisher did not complain, and I really think our readers got a kick out of it too. The story location and the story length remained the same every day, about three paragraphs, telling us there was no change in Franco’s status, under the same headline, “Franco Hovers Near Death.” We laughingly speculated that every morning people ripped open their paper to page 7 or whatever it was to see if Franco had passed on. They didn’t have to read the story, just the headline.

Poor old Franco “hovered” for about three weeks, as I recall, before finally dropping off. The night he died we moved the story to the top of page 1, gave it a big headline, put the paper to bed, and Bill and I went over to the Shamrock Bar next door to the newspaper office (a place we often NEEDED to visit after some of those nights at the paper) and had a toast to the Generalisimo, whose lingering comatose state had kept us in good humor for a few weeks. Bill’s gone now, but our friends and Dickinson Press colleagues Mike Jacobs and Clay Jenkinson and I still joke about Franco hovering near death from time to time.

Well, North Dakota’s oil industry isn’t hovering near death. Just the opposite. About the 19^th or 20^th of each month, North Dakota’s Oil and Gas Division Director, Lynn Helms, posts his own “blog,” called The Director’s Cut, on the Oil and Gas Division website, reporting on the latest oil and gas production statistics. He’s been doing this every month since April of 2010. That month, he reported:

Feb Oil 7,310,457 barrels = 261,088 barrels/day (preliminary) all time record high (underlining mine).

Since then it has been pretty much the same report every month, with just higher numbers. The terminology changed a little bit in his January report this year to:

Nov Oil 15,291,793 barrels = 509,726 barrels/day (preliminary) (NEW all time high) (adding the word NEW—in all caps—making it look much more exciting).

And it is more exciting. Here’s what it says this month:

Sep Oil 21,854,812 barrels = 728,494 barrels/day (preliminary)(NEW all-time high)

Production has almost tripled in the 33 months between the first report and the most recent report. Actually, the Director’s Cut is generally pretty interesting, with personal comments from the Director providing information on drilling rig counts, idle well counts (those wells where the drilling is done and they are just awaiting the fracking trucks), how much natural gas is being flared, where the wells are being drilled, a weather report, and a usually couched reference to the Environmental Protection Agency hinting some displeasure with fracking rules. But the message at the top remains the same: New Production Record.

So, Tribune editors, just hang onto that headline. You should be able to use it into the foreseeable future. Enforcement of oil and gas regulations might seem somewhat comatose, but I don’t see Generalissimo Helms passing on any time soon.

            Memo to North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem and North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring: You are up for re-election in 2014. Campaigns are expensive. Pretty soon it will be time to get going with your fundraising. If you need a place to start, just click here, and a list will be provided to you. The link is to the North Dakota Secretary of State’s website. On it you will find the list of 2012 campaign contributors that Jack Dalrymple provided to Al Jaeger in fulfillment of North Dakota’s campaign disclosure laws. It is a good list. It is the list of more than 1000 people who, Jack Dalrymple reports, gave him money during the past year.  From this list Jack received about $2,308,714, (give or take a few dollars, because the math was done by an English major—me) to get himself elected Governor.

            There’s a short list inside this long list. It is a list of people who are doing a bunch of business in the North Dakota oilfields right now. It is oil and gas company lawyers, engineers, oil company owners and their executives and employees, people who build housing for oilfield workers, people who own or work for subcontractors of the oil companies, trucking company owners and executives, oil company Political Action Committees (PACs), and a few other oil-related businessmen and women who are making a whole bunch of money in the oil field. Altogether there are 85 people on that shorter list. They must be very interested in North Dakota state government, because among them, they gave Jack Dalrymple $438,295 for his re-election campaign this year. They probably ought to give you guys that much for your campaigns, since you are the other two members, along with Jack Dalrymple, of the North Dakota Industrial Commission, and the three of you regulate the North Dakota oil industry. And they want to be your friends. So you don’t regulate them so much.

            End of memo.

            Well. You read the above number right. According to his reports, Jack Dalrymple raised more than four hundred thousand dollars for his campaign from the oil industry, and the people who do their business in North Dakota’s oil fields. Dalrymple’s reports listed contributions from 85 people whose gifts averaged more than $5,000 each. Such a thing is unprecedented in North Dakota. Of course, an oil boom of this sort is unprecedented too.  If this is the new normal, I am scared to death. Because such a huge concentration of cash in the hands of a regulator, provided by those being regulated, sets the stage for massive abuse. And that a group of fewer than 100 people can provide close to a half a million dollars in campaign cash to influence state policies seems almost incomprehensible to me. And, I’m sure, to most North Dakotans.

I mentioned in a blog post a couple days ago that the North Dakota Secretary of State sat on Dalrymple’s contribution report until after the election. Now, I guess, I know why. Even though Dalrymple knew he was going to win, surely he didn’t want people to know how he had come by the resources to guarantee that win.

When the report finally showed up on the Secretary of State’s website late this week, I went though it name by name. I flagged everyone who gave more than a thousand dollars, and then paid particular attention to those from outside North Dakota who gave at least that much. And then I Googled every one of them to find out who they were. That was important, because just looking at the list, it is not apparent how many of them represent the oil industry.  It was pretty easy to identify the Exxon Mobil PAC, and everyone knows Harold Hamm owns Continental Oil, but the name Robert Clark didn’t mean much to me until I Googled him and found out he was the chairman and CEO of Beartrack Energy. He gave $2,500 to Dalrymple. Dale Behan, who is, I found out, president of Western International, one of the largest suppliers of fracking water in the Bakken, wrote a check for $17,500. No doubt he’d rather have the state of North Dakota regulating fracking than the Environmental Protection Agency. I learned that Eileen Campbell of Houston, who gave $2,500, works for Marathon Oil, and that John Earley, from Durango, CO, who gave $4,000, is president of Saddle Butte Pipeline, which is owned by Peak Energy, and cut his teeth in the energy industry by spending 20 years working for the infamous Koch brothers. The list is loaded with those kinds of names, with those kinds of backgrounds. Who knew?

Now it is easier to understand why Dalrymple filed a lawsuit to open up roadless, proposed wilderness areas, to roads, so the oil companies can get in there and drill. Now we know why there will be oil wells on the boundary of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and inside Little Missouri State Park. And now we know why western North Dakota’s night sky is lit up by the flares of natural gas outlets which are supposed to have been extinguished, and the gas collected, but are allowed to burn long past the deadline outlined in state law while the Industrial Commission’s Oil and Gas Division looks the other way. Now we know why oil wells are being sited in sensitive wildlife areas, fragmenting deer habitat, inhibiting deer reproduction, and resulting in huge cutbacks in available deer licenses.

Now we know who owns North Dakota government. It cost the industry just $438,295. A pittance to them. But a huge step for North Dakota politicians into a brave new world. Jack Dalrymple has opened the doors to that new world. I am terribly worried about what comes next.

Footnote: Three other special interests stood out on Dalrymple’s fundraising list. I didn’t do the detailed examination that I did of the oil and gas industry, but the groups were visible enough to see. The coal industry got worked over pretty well, as did agricultural interests, especially folks associated with Dakota Growers Pasta, the co-op Dalrymple took private and turned into a for-profit corporation a few years ago. Those were expected. Surprising, though was a group of companies and individuals who came from other states to Minot to help clean up after the flood last year. Jack leaned on them pretty hard, and they wrote some big checks. I didn’t like that very much. Pretty cheap, I thought. And he also tapped some of the big boys, the ones who financed national conservative groups. John Childs from Florida, who wrote checks for more than $3 million to big Super-PACs like American Crossroads and Club For Growth this year (and gave $100,000 to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker during his recall election), popped for ten grand to Dalrymple, and Billy Ulm, another big supporter of Crossroads, the Karl Rove PAC, sent a check for $6,000 about ten days before the election, when Dalrymple was up about 70-30 in the polls. Go figure.  Ulm, by the way, lives in Bogart, GA. What a great name for a town. Overall, Dalrymple’s $2.3 million in contributions dwarfed those of his opponent, Ryan Taylor, who reported raising a respectable (for a Democrat) $570,000. And Dalrymple reported more than $300,000 still in the bank at the close of the General Election reporting period. We’ll have to wait until January to find out if he spent it in the closing days or if he set it aside for future efforts. Not a bad little nest egg.

So who gets credit for Heidi’s election?

Cass County gave her almost a ten thousand vote margin. Grand Forks County three thousand. But a lawyer friend of mine who studies elections says it was the turnout on the traditionally Democrat-voting Indian reservations that won her the U.S. Senate seat.  How influential were the reservations in the outcome of Heitkamp’s victory over Rick Berg? Well, the short answer is, her winning margin in the four counties in which the state’s four main reservations are located was 4,352. Heitkamp won the election by 2,994 votes. So my friend could argue, correctly, that it was the Indian vote that provided the margin of victory. But let’s look a little closer.

There were no great surprises in Indian Country. Turnout was actually down from 2008 in two of the counties, Benson and Sioux. Both had about 200 fewer voters in 2012 than in 2008. Rolette County had almost exactly the same number of voters (4548 vs. 4534), but about 500 more people voted in Mountrail County this year as opposed to four years ago. So turnout in reservation counties was actually just about exactly the same in both elections. There was only one major difference in the presidential vote in those four counties: in 2008 Obama carried Mountrail by 71 votes. This year he lost Mountrail by 559 votes. So my guess is those 500 new voters in Mountrail County were off-reservation Republicans (read: oil industry workers). Still, a good number of them voted for Heitkamp. While Obama was losing the county by 559 votes, Heidi was winning the county by 70 votes. You figure THAT out. I can’t.

But even though the Indian vote was important, the reservation voters don’t get ALL the credit for electing a U.S. Senator. Even with a 4,300 vote margin in the reservation counties, in order to win statewide, Heitkamp had to stay within a thousand or so votes of Berg in the rest of the state, so that her margin in Indian Country would put her over the top. No easy task, considering that in the race directly above her on the ballot, the presidential race (the Mountrail County numbers cited above are a microcosm), the Democratic candidate got only 39 per cent of the vote. Heitkamp got about 160,000 votes, and President Barack Obama got about 125,000. So 35,000 people—more than 10 percent of the electorate—voted for Mitt Romney and then went down one notch on the ballot and voted for Heidi Heitkamp. Put another way, one in six of Heitkamp’s voters voted for Mitt Romney. That’s pretty amazing.

And it points out a fatal flaw in Berg’s campaign strategy. He devoted probably 90 per cent of his campaign advertising dollars to painting Heitkamp into President Obama’s corner, saying that the President was bad, which made her bad, and that was the reason not to vote for her. He thought that was good enough to win the election. Problem is, he never got around to telling us what he had accomplished in his lifetime in politics and government. He never gave us a good reason to vote FOR him instead of AGAINST Heitkamp. He should have learned at least three lessons from that.

1. North Dakotans generally vote for people based on their records, on what they have done, or claim to have done. That’s why politicians like Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad and John Hoeven have never lost a major statewide election. Because they actually did stuff.
2. North Dakotans aren’t stupid
3. North Dakotans don’t like to be told what to do.

Rick Berg learned his lesson the hard way. Now, his political career is over and he can go back to making money in the property management business, doing what he says he never did in the past. Hope the learning curve isn’t too hard for him.

And now, perhaps, Berg will recall the e-mail he sent to his fellow North Dakota House Republicans in September of 2008, announcing he was stepping down from the Legislature at the end of his term. Here’s a paragraph from a Bismarck Tribune story:

“Tracy and Jack have been incredibly supportive of my ‘political hobby,’ as have my business partners,” Berg wrote, referring to his wife and son. “But now is the time for me to rebalance my priorities and devote my attention back to my family, my business and my community.”

In media stories that followed, he spoke often of his desire to spend more time with his then-ten-year-old son, saying he didn’t want to miss watching him grow up. A little strange, I thought at the time, since Legislators only spend three months every two years in Bismarck. But then, instead of retiring from politics, he quickly jumped into, and won, the race with Congressman Earl Pomeroy, first racing off to Washington for a two-year Congressional term and then quickly announcing, just a couple months after he got there, he was running for the U.S. Senate. My math says that Jack would have turned 18 back there in Fargo by the end of his dad’s six-year Senate term in Washington. Pretty much grown up by then.

But back to this year’s election. Total turnout was high, the highest it’s been since 1984, the Reagan-Mondale election. About 5,000 more people voted for President this year than voted in 2008. Most of the new voters—at least 4,000 of them—were in Burleigh and Cass Counties. Turnout was up by only about 2,000 in Oil Patch counties, in spite of a massive population influx that some are counting at 50,000. Williams County, for example—Bakken Headquarters—saw an increase of just 300 voters over its 2008 numbers, giving lie to predictions that the new oil workers there were going to turn out en masse and vote for Republicans, giving Berg a new weapon. Berg, in fact, ran lots of radio spots out west urging oil workers to vote, and to vote for him. Never happened. Mountrail, McKenzie, Burke, Divide and Dunn Counties all had a few hundred more voters this year than in past years. Heitkamp lost most of them, but outpolled Obama by hundreds of votes in every Oil Patch county.

So who gets the credit for Heidi’s win? The woman herself. She ran the best campaign the state has ever seen. And her staff, particularly manager Tessa Gould and communications director Gail Hand. And a young fellow named Ryan Nagle, who ran the party’s get out the vote effort, and was at least partly responsible for the state’s record turnout for a general election. And finally, the voters of North Dakota, choosing wisely—although Heidi was quick to point out that 50.5 per cent doesn’t give her a mandate. She probably will work with both Democrats and Republicans in Washington. That’s okay with me, if she’d just get off this Keystone Pipeline kick . . . But the bottom line is, Heidi ran a great campaign. Rick Berg didn’t. Often, that makes a difference.

ELECTION NOTES

A Costly Election

Looking at FEC reports, it looks like Heitkamp and Berg will have spent a combined $10 million on the campaign. Super PACs probably added another $5 million or so. Berg outraised Heitkamp by about a million and a  half dollars.. Both pretty amazing figures. In their last disclosure reports, filed October 17, Berg reported he had raised $5.8 million and spent $4.6 million, with about $1.2 million still in the bank (presumably seed money for his re-election effort in 6 years). Heitkamp reported raising about $4.4 million and spending just over $4 million, with $350,000 still in the bank. We’ll have to wait until they file their end-of-the-year reports to see if they spent the cash in the bank between October 17 and Election Day.

Sore losers

Conservative pundits don’t give up easily. Instead of giving the American Public credit for wise choices, and giving President Obama credit for a great campaign, they’re the same old whiners they were last week. They say Obama’s still wrong, he’s still a bad person, his policies are still very bad, but the Republican Party and its weak candidate, Mitt Romney, didn’t do a good enough job of telling the American people that, so he got re-elected. And besides, Chris Christie, selfishly looking out for just the people of his state instead of the entire country after the big storm, sold us out.

Send Money

I started getting the profusion of fundraising e-mails from Heidi Heitkamp, Pam Gulleson and the Democratic Party right after the June Primary, so I kept track of them. Between June 6 and Election Day, I got 42 e-mails from Heidi or her supporters asking me to send money to her campaign. I got 26 from Pam Gulleson. I got more than 75 from Barack Obama and the national Democratic Party. I prefer to be asked personally to give money, not in an impersonal electronic message. I mostly ignored them after a while, but for a short time I read them, and since I know something about fundraising appeals, I kind of kept track of the good ones and the bad ones. Only one stands out in my mind—as the worst pitch for money ever. It was from Gulleson, and it read:

Subject: My car broke down.

6/30/2012

Dear James, 

            It’s been quite a day. I got to visit with folks in Dickinson and enjoyed the Roughrider Parade. But after a long day of fun and sun, my trusty campaign car broke down just outside of Dickinson!

            I love to travel this great state and meet North Dakotans, and it’s essential in a campaign like this.

            Can you give $25 right now to get me back on the road?

            Thanks for standing by me – I couldn’t do it without you! And I hope to be back on the road and driving to a town near you sometime soon.

            If 80 people give just $25 that’ll pay for the repairs. And don’t forget – our fundraising deadline ends tonight at midnight!

            Thanks,

            Pam

So I’ve just got until midnight to send you some money so you can get your car fixed? Y’know, I’ve met panhandlers with better lines than that. I’m sorry, Pam, but asking supporters to pay for fixing your car goes beyond the pale. I gave you a little money to help pay for TV ads earlier, but I think keeping your car running is probably your own responsibility.

Bye, Bye, Turdblossom?      

Here’s something I take great delight in. Karl Rove’s super PAC, American Crossroads, spent $180 million—you read that right, a hundred and eighty million dollars—of other people’s money, on attack ads against President Obama, and another $76 million on ads attacking Democratic U.S. Senate candidates, including Heidi Heitkamp. Obama won, as did 5 of the 7 Senate candidates Rove spent money against. Maybe we’ve finally seen the last of Karl Rove now. Maybe people will finally stop giving him money. Or maybe not.

Is Pomeroy Smiling? 

You might expect that one of the biggest smiles in Washington this week is on Earl Pomeroy’s face, after watching Heidi take out the guy who beat him in 2010 after just one term in office. Might be a bit of a wistful smile, though. If things had gone a little differently two years ago, Earl could be Senator-Elect Pomeroy today. Think about that. You might also have thought that this year,  Pomeroy, now a lobbyist with the K Street firm of Alston & Bird, would have been one of the biggest donors to Heitkamp’s campaign. Not so. FEC reports show Pomeroy gave just $1,000 to Heitkamp, and his former chief of staff, Bob Siggins, now also an employee of Alston & Bird, gave just $500. Considering how important it was for Heitkamp to keep up with Berg in the financial arena, that’s surprising. Alston & Bird’s political action committee (Alston & Bird PAC) contributed about $250,000 to candidates for the U.S. House and Senate this year. There were 33 U.S. Senate races this year. The PAC made contributions to 28 Senators or Senate candidates. Heitkamp’s name was conspicuously absent from the list. Go figure. A side note: Just to show you how lobbying firm PACs work, in the House, where Republicans hold the majority, the Alston& Bird PAC gave $101,000 to Republicans and $36,000 to Democrats. But in the Senate, where Democrats hold sway, they gave $86,500 to Democrats and $16,500 to Republicans. That, I am guessing, is typical of Washington lobbying firm PACs. And we wonder why incumbents so rarely lose office. Doesn’t all this just make you gag little bit?

Who Owns North Dakota?

Just today, more than two weeks after North Dakota candidates up for election filed their campaign disclosure reports, listing the donors to their campaign, Governor Jack Dalrymple’s list of donors showed up on the Secretary of State’s website. I had been wondering why it took so long, so I asked the Secretary of State’s office the other day why the reports from Dalrymple and his opponent, Ryan Taylor, were the only ones not on the website. Al Jaeger’s staff replied that Dalrymple’s was very long, more than 60 pages, and it was taking them a long time to type it into the computer database. Uh huh. That would have been about 4 pages per day. Or just maybe someone did not want voters to see how many checks he got from oil company executives until the election was over. That list is long. I’m going through it today and will add something to this report when I get through it. The Secretary of State’s office said they had some questions about Taylor’s report that they were still trying to get answers to. It was not on the website as of 11 a.m. today (I doubt it will be 60 pages). Dalrymple’s report showed he raised $1.4 million from May 15 through October 25. There were 920 donors who gave reportable contributions of more than $200. Those gifts totaled about $1.3 million, an average of about $1,500. Not bad for a small time governor in a small state.

The Future for Dorgan and Conrad

Politico this week reports that the Obama administration  is looking for a role for soon-to-be -former Senator Kent Conrad in the administration. And they mention Dorgan’s name as a possibility for a cabinet post in Obama’s second term. Stay tuned.

MTK. (My old-school journalism friends will know what that means.)