Last Week Revealed Cramer’s True Character

(BISMARCK, ND) – From misleading North Dakotans about their health care to taking credit for one of Senator Heitkamp’s key accomplishments to horrible comments regarding sexual assault, last week showed Kevin Cramer’s true character.

🤥MONDAY – The president announced new tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese imports and, once again, Kevin Cramer didn’t stand up to the administration and for North Dakota interests. That’s because Cramer has promised to stand with the president 100 percent of the time, even when it’s bad for our state.

🤥TUESDAY – China retaliates with tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods. Cramer still doesn’t stand up to the administration’s reckless trade war.

🤥WEDNESDAY – Cramer gets THREE PINOCCHIOS for his false claim that the Republican House bill prevented price discrimination against folks with pre-existing conditions.

🤥THURSDAY – The Washington Post takes down Cramer’s claim that he is responsible for lifting the crude oil export ban: “Lifting the ban, however, is an accomplishment for which many lawmakers in both parties give Heitkamp credit.”

🤥FRIDAY – NBC also looks into Cramer’s claim on the crude oil export ban – a key accomplishment of Senator Heitkamp’s – and finds that Cramer “overstated how much he did.”

🤥MORE FRIDAY – Cramer calls recent sexual assault allegations “absurd” because the attempted assault “never went anywhere.”

🤥SATURDAY – Cramer doubles down on his insensitive comments regarding sexual assault.

🤥SUNDAY – Cramer solidifies his stance as the Todd Akin of the 2018 cycle.

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Cramer’s Weekend of Chaos

(BISMARCK, ND) – As first reported by CNN and TPM, Kevin Cramer spent the weekend belittling victims of sexual assault, arguing that a sexual assault allegation was “absurd” because it “never went anywhere.” But rather than apologizing for his insensitive remarks, Cramer doubled down, reminding Republicans once again why they didn’t want him to run in the first place – and drawing comparisons to failed Senate candidate Todd Akin’s infamous ‘legitimate rape’ comments.

TPM: Cramer Looks To Clarify Controversial Comments On Kavanaugh Accusation
By Cameron Joseph

  • A day after making calling the allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh “even more absurd” than the ones Anita Hill made a generation ago against Clarence Thomas, Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) is seeking to clean up his remarks — without walking away from his view that the allegations are “absurd.”
  • Cramer, a top Senate candidate facing Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), doesn’t exactly back away from the thrust of remarks made Friday on a local radio show that Ford’s accusations against Kavanaugh are “absurd.”
  • His Friday comments, surfaced by TPMand CNN, triggered an immediate firestorm in the political world.
  • They risk damaging Cramer’s campaign even in the deep red state.

HPR: ​‘NEVER WENT ANYWHERE’
By C.S. Hagen

  • Time after time, Congressman Kevin Cramer makes light of sexual misconduct allegations and of provisions in law protecting women against violence. Repeatedly, he has mocked women who do not toe the conservative line, and has threatened violence against Native women.
  • In addition to his comments on Friday, Cramer has repeatedly mocked women during his tenure. In March 2017, Cramer slammed “poorly dressed” Democratic women who wore “bad-looking white pantsuits” in solidarity with failed Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
  • Earlier this year Cramer praised Will Gardner, the Peeping Tom running for Secretary of State as “a very good man,” and a gentleman, even after evidence came forward that he was caught prowling outside a women’s dormitory at North Dakota State University with his pants unzipped, shirt undone, and belt left in his car in 2006. Defending Gardner, Cramer continued his defense of Gardner by saying he had been redeemed, and that the evidence against him shouldn’t be a “compelling case” not to vote for him.
  • In June this year, shortly after Cramer announced he was vacating his seat in the U.S. Congress for the U.S. Senate, said President Donald Trump was treating Heitkamp kindly because she was a woman. “I do think there’s a little difference in that she’s a woman,” Cramer told the Washington Post. That’s probably part of it, that she’s a, you know, a female. He doesn’t want to be that aggressive, maybe. I don’t know.”
  • Cramer, who accepted the endorsement of the Public Advocate of the United States on May 20, labeled an extremist hate group peddling in conspiracy theories, and has never disavowed the endorsement of the state’s Nationalist Socialist Movement unit leader, attacked and threatened Native women during a meeting over the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013.

Mother Jones: GOP Senate Candidate Calls Kavanaugh Allegation “Absurd” Because the Assault “Never Went Anywhere”
By Madison Pauly

  • Republican Senate candidate Rep. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh were “absurd,” dismissing the claim because it involved teenagers who had been drinking and only attempted—not completed—rape.
  • It’s far from the first time Cramer […] has demeaned women.
  • This week, when Heitkamp accused him of stealing creditfor overturning a 40-year ban on exporting crude oil, he called her response a “hissy fit,” NBC reported. Last year, he described women who wore white in honor of suffragettes to one of President Donald Trump’s first addresses as being “poorly dressed” and looking “silly,” according to NPR. And over the summer, he explained Trump’s apparent friendliness toward Heitkamp—a conservative Democrat who has voted with Trump’s position more than 55 percent of the time—by claiming Trump wouldn’t want to be aggressive toward a woman. “She’s a, you know, a female,” he told the Washington Post. “He doesn’t want to be that aggressive, maybe.”
  • When CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski asked him to clarify his statement, Cramer doubled down, saying that Ford’s accusation was “more absurd” than Hill’s: “Absent significant evidence being brought forth immediately, I feel Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation process should proceed.”

Forum News Service: Cramer: Allegations against Kavanaugh are ‘absurd’
By John Hageman

  • North Dakota Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer dismissed sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh as “absurd” Friday, Sept. 21.
  • In a radio interview with Jarrod Thomas of KNOX, Cramer said Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh are “even more absurd” than those Anita Hill leveled against now-Justice Clarence Thomas during his confirmation process “because these people were teenagers when this supposed alleged incident took place” instead of a supervisor-subordinate relationship. “These are teenagers who evidently were drunk, according to her own statement,” Cramer said. “Again, it was supposedly an attempt or something that never went anywhere.”
  • In a statement issued by his campaign Saturday, Cramer said he meant to compare Hill’s accusations from 1991 to Ford’s. “The point of my answer was that the current allegations were even more absurd,” Cramer’s statement said. “At the time, there was a sense of legitimacy to what Anita Hill was saying, but it is hard not to be skeptical considering the timing and history of the allegation Brett Kavanaugh is facing.”

Associated Press: North Dakota Senate candidate: Kavanaugh allegation ‘absurd’

Washington Examiner: GOP Senate nominee: Accusation against Kavanaugh ‘absurd’ because they were drunk teenagers

HuffPost: Congressman Discounts Kavanaugh’s ‘Supposed’ Assault That Didn’t Go ‘Anywhere’

Daily Beast: GOP Candidate: Ford’s Allegation Against Kavanaugh is ‘Absurd’ Because They Were Drunk Teens

The Hill: Heitkamp knocks GOP challenger for ‘disturbing’ comments on Kavanaugh allegations

Daily Kos: Sen. Heidi Heitkamp’s Republican challenger opines on Kavanaugh and shoots himself in the foot

Meet the Press:

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BREAKING: Cramer Calls Sexual Assault Accusation “Absurd” Because They “Never Went Anywhere”

(Bismarck, ND) – Kevin Cramer’s never-ending ability to stick his foot in his mouth with unbelievably offensive comments and lack of empathy rears its ugly head again. These comments make clear, Kevin Cramer just doesn’t get it.

Reminder: Republicans actively searched for another candidate to run because they were worried about Cramer’s “Akin-like tendencies.” Today’s comments prove their fears were spot on.

CNN: GOP Senate nominee: Kavanaugh accusation ‘absurd’ because they were drunk and assault attempt ‘never went anywhere’
By Andrew Kaczynski and Christopher Massie

  • North Dakota GOP Senate nominee Kevin Cramer said on Friday that the accusation against Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh was “even more absurd” than Anita Hill’s accusation against Clarence Thomas because Kavanaugh and his accuser were drunk teenagers when the alleged incident occurred.
  • “If to the degree there was any legitimacy to Anita Hill’s claims, and she tried and didn’t prevail — Clarence Thomas did and America did — this case is even more absurd because these people were teenagers when this supposed alleged incident took place,” Cramer said on the Jarrod Thomas Showon 1310 KNOX, a local North Dakota radio station. “Teenagers. Not a boss-supervisor-subordinate situation, as the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill situation was claimed to be. These are teenagers who evidently were drunk, according to her own statement. They were drunk. Nothing evidently happened in it all, even by her own accusation. Again, it was supposedly an attempt or something that never went anywhere.”
  • A campaign spokesman for Cramer, who is running for US Senate against Democratic incumbent Heidi Heitkamp, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
  • “You just can’t expect to defame a guy who’s got a stellar record and a stellar, nearly perfect reputation, near as I can tell, character-wise, and be able to be the last word,” the Senate nominee and congressman said.
  • Cramer went on to say that if the allegations are true it is a “tragedy” for Ford that her accusation is being used by Democrats as a “political weapon.”
  • [Cramer continued,] “It’s going to get very difficult to get good people to do these jobs if this is going to be the standard if you have to have a perfect record in junior high and high school.”

TPM: Top GOP Senate Nominee: Kavanaugh Accusations ‘Absurd’ Because ‘They Were Teenagers,’ Assault ‘Never Went Anywhere’
By Cameron Joseph

  • Kevin Cramer (R-ND), the GOP Senate nominee, said Friday that giving credence to allegations that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted a young woman when they were teenagers is “absurd.”
  • Cramer sounded off on professor Christine Blasey Ford’s claim that Brett Kavanaugh drunkenly sexually assaulted her when she was 15 and he was 17 during a radio interview, describing them as “even more absurd” than Anita Hill’s accusations that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her because of Kavanaugh’s age at the time and because it was “an attempt or something that never went anywhere.”
  • Cramer’s comments could hurt him as he seeks to defeat Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) this fall.
  • Setting everything else he said aside, Cramer’s description of Blasey Ford’s accusations are factually incorrect. She toldthe Washington Post last Sunday that Kavanaugh and his friend who was in the room with them were “stumbling drunk” but that she and the others at the party had one beer apiece.

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CROOKED CRAMER’S CHRONICLES – CRAMER’S WEEK OF LIES – THREE PINOCCHIOS – CRAMER TAKING CREDIT FOR HEIDI’S WORK

Welcome to Cramer’s Chronicles where, every Friday, we’ll break down the latest and greatest weekly hits about Cramer’s crooked, self-serving, extreme, and gaffe-prone behavior that puts himself and his partisan politics ahead of North Dakotans.

CRAMER’S WEEK OF LIES. It wouldn’t be a day that ends in ‘Y’ if Cramer wasn’t caught stretching the truth about the issues or papering over his record to mislead North Dakotans before Election Day.

THREE PINOCCHIOS FOR HEALTH CARE CLAIM ON PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS. Cramer’s false claim that the Republican House bill prevented price discrimination against folks with pre-existing conditions was highlighted in the Washington Post and published by the Forum:

  • [The GOP’s pledge on preexisting conditions] may look great on paper, but the reality is that it is not a sustainable pledge.
  • Thus Cramer goes too far to claim that in the AHCA, there are “safeguards to make sure that there’s not price discrimination as a result of preexisting conditions.” […] He earns Three Pinocchios.

CRAMER AD CLAIMS HE LED CRUDE OIL BAN REPEAL, BUT OTHER LAWMAKERS CREDIT HEITKAMP. Both NBC News and Washington Post highlighted Senator Heitkamp’s leading role in helping to lift the crude oil export ban – and Cramer’s attempt to take credit for her accomplishment.

NBC News:

  • North Dakota Democrat Sen. Heidi Heitkamp went out on limb three years ago to convince skeptical members of her party to support legislation that lifted 40-year ban on exporting crude oil from the United States to countries around the world.
  • Heitkamp […] first called for the repeal of the ban on crude oil exports in August 2014. She wrote a standalone repeal bill and began trying to sell the issue to her fellow Democrats throughout 2015, pitching it as an economic boon and a source of good jobs while lobbying the White House on the issue.
  • She worked with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to push the issue, and started putting the oil industry in the same room with unlikely supporters like Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, to talk a repeal out.
  • Heitkamp turned “no” votes into “yes” votes in the Senate, and by many accounts, was crucial to getting the bill across the finish line and signed by the White House.

Washington Post:

  • Lifting the ban, however, is an accomplishment for which many lawmakers in both parties give Heitkamp credit.
  • Without Heitkamp, “I don’t know that it would have happened,” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) in 2015, according to Bloomberg Government. Sen. Lisa Murkowksi (R-Alaska) added that Heitkamp was “just dogged in her efforts to help educate her party.”

MORE TARIFFS ANNOUNCED, SOYBEANS NOT SELLING, BUT CRAMER IS ABSENT. On Monday, the president further escalated the trade war, announcing tariffs on an additional $200 billion of Chinese imports and prompting the Chinese to retaliate. There haven’t been orders for soybeans from the Pacific Northwest for over 13 weeks, but Cramer still hasn’t become “concerned” enough to do anything. In fact, he’s still maintaining that “the trade issues [are] to the benefit of North Dakotans and North Dakota farmers.” Anything to increase his political capital, we guess.

Reminder: It’s been more than 20 days since Cramer missed his self-imposed deadline for when he’d become “concerned” enough to stand with North Dakotans against the trade war. But all we’ve seen from him is paying lip service to the president.

MORE ON CRAMER’S HEALTH CARE AGENDA. Cramer’s dangerous health care agenda was back in the spotlight this week after being called out for his false claim on preventing price discriminations against folks with pre-existing conditions. Besides lying to North Dakotans about their care, Cramer voted FIVE times to repeal the current health care law without a replacement and actively supports a reckless lawsuit – both of which would get rid of patient protection laws that prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to folks with pre-existing conditions or charging them more for their care.

TWEET OF THE WEEK.

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North Dakota in “Eye of Trade Storm”

(BISMARCK, ND) – Kevin Cramer is “betting the farm on the president,” choosing to stand with the president 100 percent of the time even as “[t]he trade dispute continues to drive soybean prices lower, as China’s retaliatory tariffs hurt orders for soybeans.” Just this week, “soybean prices fell to a decade-low” – a result of the growing trade war – but Cramer is still kowtowing to the president and putting his political capital first.

Reuters: Grains-Soybean Prices Edge Down, Linger Near Decade-Low

Fence Post: Brazil soybean exports to China soar

Markets Insider: Soybeans plunge to near their lowest level in a decade

  • “Soybean prices fell to a decade-low on Tuesday after data pointed to a quickly advancing US harvest and as the Trump administration escalated trade tensions with the China, the largest destination for American exports of the legume.”

Farm Bureau News: As Harvest Marches On, Tariff Pain to Follow

  • “[T]he feeling that the worst is yet to come hangs over producers. The consensus is that the impact of lower prices and weak demand from some key foreign customers will be most widespread as the combines roll and harvest 2018 gets underway.”

Bloomberg: Soy Boom State Finds Itself in Eye of Trade Storm

  • North Dakota — home to the fourth-smallest U.S. population — is suddenly finding itself at the center of the escalating trade war between the world’s largest economies.
  • Positioned closer to western U.S. ports than most areas of the soy belt, farmers [in North Dakota] were in a unique position to capitalize on China’s skyrocketing demand for the oilseed that’s used to make animal feed and cooking oil. Now that the crop has been caught in the crossfire of the U.S.-China trade spat, that demand is disappearing.
  • “It’s been built up, built up, built up — and now, it’s like the faucet has been turned off,” said Nancy Johnson of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association.
  • With export elevators in Portland not posting bids, or purchase offers, through February, the state’s basis — the spread between Chicago futures and local cash prices — has “crashed” to a discount of almost $2 in some areas, he said. That’s about double the discount this time last year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
  • The pain of lower prices is especially acute in export-dependent areas like North Dakota.
  • Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat from North Dakota, criticized the trade war in a Sept. 17 tweet, saying it’s left the state’s “farmers without any soybean orders from China” and pointed growers to a North Dakota State University presentation warning them to be prepared to store beans until mid-summer 2019.
  • As harvest starts near Berthold Farmers Elevator’s two locations in northwest North Dakota, the company will only be accepting soybeans that were previously contracted for delivery, said General Manager Dan Mostad. The elevator also won’t run storage programs for farmers, which let them deliver crops that are priced later in the season. “Those options aren’t available now because of the risk associated with price,” he said. “It’s really been not a fun problem to deal with for the whole soybean supply chain. It’s uncharted waters.”

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Cramer’s Long History of Jeopardizing Coverage for Pre-Existing Conditions

(BISMARCK, ND) – Kevin Cramer’s history of jeopardizing coverage for pre-existing conditions goes back long before the AHCA and his endorsement of the partisan lawsuit that would get rid of the current health care law. Once elected to Congress, Cramer voted five times to repeal the current health care law without a replacement, which would have gotten rid of vital patient protections and had devastating effects on North Dakotans. See what repealing the current health care law without a replacement would do to North Dakotans’ care:

  • Nearly 300,000 North Dakotans with pre-existing conditions would lose protections that prevent insurance companies from denying them insurance entirely or charging higher premiums
  • Older North Dakotans could be charged five times more for their care than younger people
  • North Dakota seniors could be forced to pay more for prescription drugs

“No matter how much Kevin Cramer tries to rewrite history and paper over his record, North Dakotans know that, when push came to shove, Cramer prioritized his own political self-interest by consistently voting to gut protections for pre-existing conditions,” said Courtney Rice, Press Secretary for the North Dakota Democratic-NPL.

Read more about Cramer’s dangerous health care agenda here.

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Cramer Gets Three Pinocchios for Health Care Claim on Pre-Existing Conditions

Washington Post: Would the House GOP plan have prevented ‘price discrimination’ against people with preexisting conditions?
By Glenn Kessler
September 19, 2018

Key Points:

  • [W]e are going to examine Cramer’s statement that the American Health Care Act (AHCA), passed in the House, had safeguards that prevented price discrimination as a result of preexisting conditions. (The bill never advanced in the Senate.) Cramer serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and has said, “I have read the 200-page bill in its entirety and debated nearly every section of it during a 27-hour hearing.” So he certainly should understand the nuances.
  • Before Obamacare, insurance companies could consider a person’s health status when determining premiums, sometimes making coverage unaffordable or even unavailable if a person was sick with a problem that required expensive treatment. The ACA prohibited that, in part by requiring everyone to purchase insurance, in what was known as the individual mandate.
  • The waiver system designed under the AHCA was criticized by health-care experts. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office sketched a scenario that described unraveling insurance markets and spiraling health-care premiums if the AHCA had become law.
  • Matthew Fielder of the Brookings Institution, who had been chief economist of the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama, said that under the MacArthur Amendment, he believed the higher premiums would extend even to people without coverage gaps. That’s because healthy people would have an incentive to drop out of community-written pools and just buy insurance based on their health status, as premiums would be lower. Thus the community pools would be filled with increasingly sicker people facing increasingly higher premiums.
  • The CBO, in its report, said that states that took advantage of these provisions could perversely end up blowing up their insurance markets, leaving spiraling costs for people with preexisting conditions, even as average premiums might end up lower.
  • Eventually, the CBO said, community-rated “premiums would be so high in some areas that the plans would have no enrollment. Such a market would be similar to the nongroup market before the enactment of the ACA, in which premiums were underwritten and plans often included high deductibles and limits on insurers’ payments and people with high expected medical costs were often unable to obtain coverage.”
  • The CBO was highly skeptical that the GOP legislation provided enough funding for states to offer assistance to people who could not afford insurance. “The funding would not be sufficient to substantially reduce the large increases in premiums for high-cost enrollees,” the agency said, so over time, less-healthy people “would be unable to purchase comprehensive coverage with premiums close to those under current law and might not be able to purchase coverage at all.”
  • [The GOP’s pledge on preexisting conditions] may look great on paper, but the reality is that it is not a sustainable pledge.
  • Thus Cramer goes too far to claim that in the AHCA, there are “safeguards to make sure that there’s not price discrimination as a result of preexisting conditions.” […] He earns Three Pinocchios.

Read the full article here.

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Cramer Missing in Action on Farm Bill

(BISMARCK, ND) – With the deadline looming to pass a bipartisan Farm Bill before it expires on September 30th, Kevin Cramer is nowhere to be found. North Dakotans rely on a strong Farm Bill, especially now that the Cramer-endorsed trade war is escalating. But rather than working on behalf of North Dakotans, Cramer is taking the week off – choosing to campaign for higher office rather than do his job.

Should it really come as a surprise that Cramer is absent on the Farm Bill? He’s been oblivious to the ins and outs of the bill and its importance to farmers and is a member of an extreme anti-ag group that pushed for eliminating the Renewable Fuel Standard, eliminating the sugar program, and for devastating cuts to crop insurance and nutrition programs. Furthermore, Cramer has a history of playing politics with the Farm Bill – and it seems like this time around is no different.

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Cramer Supports DeVos’ Anti-North Dakota Education Agenda

(BISMARCK, ND) – What does it cost to convince Kevin Cramer to support an anti-public education, anti-North Dakota agenda? Apparently only $21,600. That’s how much Cramer has taken in campaign contributions from the DeVos family.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who “made her reputation by undermining public schools,” was overwhelmingly opposed during her confirmation hearing: ND United urged against her confirmation, as did the Williston Herald and Forum editorial boards. And, across the state, “local educators [found] DeVos unqualified and worr[ied] about the impact her support for charter schools would have on public education.” That’s why Senator Heitkamp opposed DeVos’ nomination. But Cramer? He’d rather increase his political capital and stand with his financiers than with North Dakota.

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Cramer Still Wants to Gut Pre-Existing Condition Protections

(Bismarck, ND) – Kevin Cramer can spin all he wants to try and convince North Dakotans that he’ll protect coverage for pre-existing conditions, but here’s the truth: Cramer supports a reckless, partisan lawsuit that would get rid of the current health care law, including patient protections that prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to folks with pre-existing conditions or charging them more for their care.

“Kevin Cramer can see the writing on the wall: his dangerous health care agenda, including gutting protections for those with pre-existing protections, is deeply unpopular with voters on both sides of the aisle,” said Courtney Rice, Press Secretary for the North Dakota Democratic-NPL. “But no amount of election year spin can cover up the fact that for his entire career in Washington, Cramer has voted dozens of times to undermine the care and patient protections North Dakotans rely on.”

Background:
HuffPost: GOP Senate Candidates Are Scrambling To Rewrite Their Record On Pre-Existing Conditions
CNBC: Kaiser poll: 75% of Americans want to keep key ACA protection as GOP challenges constitutionality
High Plains Reader: Cramer’s Office Threatens Constituents

Read more about Cramer’s dangerous health care agenda here.

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More Tariffs Announced – Where Is Cramer?

(BISMARCK, ND) – Over the weekend, the administration announced tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese imports, which are set to take effect “weeks before [the] November elections” and “are all but certain to be met immediately by Chinese retaliation against U.S. exporters, especially against farmers.” This announcement follows the president’s threat of additional tariffs on $257 billion on Chinese goods that were announced en route to Kevin Cramer’s fundraiser in Fargo less than two weeks ago.

Reminder: It’s been more than 16 days since Cramer missed his self-imposed deadline for when he’d become “concerned” enough to stand with North Dakota against the trade war – and bizarrely, Cramer is still maintaining that “the trade issues [are] to the benefit of North Dakotans and North Dakota farmers.” Cramer cowered when had the opportunity to stand with North Dakota against the trade war, instead choosing to put his political capital and financial self-interest ahead of the folks he’s supposed to represent.

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CROOKED CRAMER’S CHRONICLES – SKIPPING AG FORUM TO FUNDRAISE – DECLINING DEBATES

Welcome to Cramer’s Chronicles where, every Friday, we’ll break down the latest and greatest weekly hits about Cramer’s crooked, self-serving, extreme, and gaffe-prone behavior that puts himself and his partisan politics ahead of North Dakotans.

CRAMER SKIPS AG FORUM TO FUNDRAISE. 💰Kevin Cramer made his priorities clear when he chose to hobnob with donors at an up to $50,000 closed-door fundraiser in Texas rather than discuss important ag issues with North Dakotans at Big Iron, the largest farm show in the upper Midwest. But of course Cramer wouldn’t want to attend, he would’ve been forced to discuss “topics [on which he] has a relatively weak position,” including “trade where he has backed the President’s actions and the farm bill where he is limited in what he can do because he chose not to be on the House Agriculture Committee.”

WATCH WDAY’s coverage of the event: “WDAY reached out to Cramer’s campaign to see if the congressman had a response. The congressman is traveling today, and could not be reached before the show.”

Our take: Not only is Kevin Cramer too cowardly to face farmers and manufacturers attending Big Iron after he repeatedly kowtowed to the administration on the trade war, but he’s using the opportunity to seek financial gain. Unfortunately, that’s typical behavior for Cramer – North Dakotans have come to expect nothing more from the same politician who puts his finances above all else.

DECLINING DEBATES. As Tyler Axness points out, Cramer’s “snub” of the ag issues forum “is the latest in a growing list” of debates and forums Cramer has refused to participate in. So far, Cramer has declined six events with Senator Heitkamp. What is he afraid of? Perhaps it’s his health care agenda that threatens coverage for many folks in North Dakota, including individuals with a pre-existing condition. Or maybe it’s his reckless embrace of the administration’s trade war that’s hurting North Dakota’s farmers, manufacturers, and producers. Or maybe it’s his repeated calls to cut Social Security or Medicare. Since he’s turning down debates left and right, we may never know.

“MR. CRAMER… YOU DON’T SEEM TO CARE.” Be sure to watch Heidi for North Dakota’s newest ad, “Blame,” in which a Carrington soybean farmer calls out Cramer for not caring about the havoc-wreaking consequences this trade war is having on the state.

ICYMI: CRAMER TRADE WAR GOES “FROM BAD TO WORSE IN CAVALIER COUNTY.”

  • With no end in sight to the current trade war with China, projected lower yields, and limited ways to store the beans that are harvested long term, the once cash crop is now a cash flop.
  • In years prior, soybean growers in the area could expect around $8.50 to $8.75 per bushel. This year’s prices have been completely different, with prices hanging close to $6.75 per bushel. Since July, the basis for soybeans has dropped about 70 cents.
  • “Farmers didn’t have anything to do with the tariffs; we were simply a pawn in the game which makes it difficult,” [Nancy Johnson, Executive Director of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association] said. “We certainly are not getting any indications that the trade with China will be resolved. Farmers are looking at long-term storage and hoping for better prices in Spring.
  • Johnson explained that after nearly four decades of creating a market in China that takes 70 percent of U.S. soybeans and streamlining the transportation process in North Dakota to expedited the shipping, the lack of foresight into how the tariffs would effect producers is frustrating. “We did the work, and now we are being punished,” Johnson stated.
  • Senator Heidi Heitkamp has been working diligently to support farmers amid the ongoing trade war.

OUT OF TOUCH WITH ND: EXAMPLE ∞ . Cramer once again proved that he’s out of touch with North Dakotans, claiming that, in today’s economy, $1,000 “isn’t really that high a price” in reference to his fundraiser last week.

READ OF THE WEEK: “WHAT DO NATIVE AMERICANS HAVE TO LOSE WITH CRAMER? A LOT.” Mike McFeely lays out what exactly Native Americans have to lose by voting for Cramer. The answer? “A hell of a lot.”

  • What the hell do they have to lose? An advocate in the Senate for starters. A voice. An ally. Somebody who has made Native American issues one of the centerpieces of her stay in the Senate.
  • Heitkamp has kept Native American issues at the forefront. She’s a member of the Indian Affairs Committee, an assignment she’s held since shortly after being elected in 2012. The first bill Heitkamp introduced, a bipartisan one, called for a commission on Native children. She worked with Republican Sen. John McCain to expand AMBER Alerts to reservations. She recently introduced Savanna’s Act to protect missing and murdered Native women in the wake of the horrific murder of Fargo’s Savanna Greywind. Heitkamp supported greater protections for Native American women in the Violence Against Women Act. She’s fought for better federal law enforcement presence in Indian Country.
  • And Cramer? He’s so sympathetic to Native Americans that he told a gathering at Spirit Lake he didn’t feel safe on the reservation because he’s white, in the midst of lecturing a domestic abuse survivor on the constitutionality of tribal provisions in the Violence Against Women Act.

TWEET OF THE WEEK.