First of, forget most of your preconceptions of North Dakota. It's not just a big old open air old folks home anymore- more kids from my county in western Minnesota are attending North Dakota colleges than Minnesota ones. Fargo, the state's biggest city, is growing by leaps and bounds- the housing boom is still growing strong there. In the northwestern corner of the North Dakota there are literal oil exploration fueled boomtowns. Thanks to that oil boom and the newfound profitability of farming, North Dakota's Republican and Democratic Non Partisan League parties are arguing over how best to spend budget surpluses. Meanwhile, thousands of farmers and related industry folks from around the world attended last week's "Big Iron" farm show. They had quarter million dollar combines that can mow a swath as wide as a city lot and GPS navigation systems that even steered them and signs advertising them in russian as well as english.
Despite global warming it's still cold though... But today it was in the 70s and sunny, so hop on the bike as we take a cruise through North Dakota politics.
The Obama campaign strategy in North Dakota is simple: canvass, canvass, canvass, then canvass some more. And when it get's dark, phone bank. I've dropped by three North Dakota Obama campaign offices, and two out of those three times I was asked to phone bank. At one campaign office I asked if they were doing anything at the community fairs the coming weekends. They weren't even aware they existed. Even the Big Iron show that draws 50,000 people was barely acknowledged by the Obama campaign. All that canvassing and phone banking can get pretty draining, which may explain why the reputed Obama staffer head count in ND has dropped from 100 to 50.
The air war isn't going much better than the ground war- I've yet to hear an Obama ad on North Dakota radio. Yes, the Obama campaign is up on TV. But North Dakotans work long hours, especially during harvest season- they're still in the tractor, the truck, or the shop during the evening news and are on the way to bed by the 10 o'clock news. Talk radio is the arbiter of North Dakota public opinion, and while you'll hear plenty of ads for statewide and local candidates on KFGO, KFYR, etc., you'll hear not a single Obama ad.
One cannot help but reach the conclusion that the ND Obama campaign is being run out of Chicago, with blind faith that what worked in Iowa (but didn't work in several other states) will work in North Dakota and everywhere. But occasionally the Obama command and control center in Chicago loses a bit of control, and the North Dakota DemNPLers do something clever- like their shopping mall campaign office in Jamestown!
Now the DemNPLers aren't dumb- they have managed to win and hold the congressional and both senate seats, and are making progress in winning the legislative majority for the first time in years. So they rent space in the local mall where the voters are going to be anyway, and they walk in and say hello so the campaign doesn't have to slog door to door to find them. While the Obama campaign is still trying to validate Saul Alinsky's community organizing model, the local DemNPLers went where the voters are- the mall!
Memo to the Obama campaign- cut loose your North Dakota staff and tell them to take orders from the local democrats instead. They just might win North Dakota yet.