"Every law enforcement officer I've spoken to has said this has been hard on our state and hard on law enforcement." That's what Burleigh County Sheriff Kelly Leben had to say on this episode of Plain Talk. He's referring to Measure 5 on North Dakota's November ballot which, if passed, would legalize the recreational use of marijuana. "I'm very big on personal freedom," Sheriff Leben told co-host Chad Oban and I, but added that those liberties have to be balanced with the needs of public safety....
Aug 21, 2024•57 min
"Let's take valuations away." That's what state Rep. Ben Koppelman proposed on this episode of Plain Talk. He's referring to a plan for property tax reform that he's proposed should Measure 4 -- a constitutional ban on taxing property values -- fail on the statewide ballot in November. Koppelman would like to see property taxed on size, not value. His plan would levy mills on the square footage of properties, and the structures on those properties, with residential property owners seeing their b...
Aug 16, 2024•1 hr 5 min
Even if North Dakota voters approve Measure 4, a constitutional amendment that would disallow taxes on real estate values, our state and its elected leaders will still need to figure out how to replace the roughly $2.4 billion in revenues those taxes generate very budget cycle. We're going to pay for it. The question is how. Neal Messer, a farmer, businessman, and commissioner in Stark County, joined this episode of Plain Talk to discuss what that problem might look like from a local level. One ...
Aug 14, 2024•1 hr 4 min
The emergence of Vice President Kamala Harris as the top-of-the-ticket candidate for Democrats, nationally, has created an undeniable wave of enthusiasm among our liberal friends. North Dakota's Democrats are no different. "There's a new pep in our step," state Rep. Zac Ista told my co-host Chad Oban and I on this episode of Plain Talk. Ista is a Democrat from Grand Forks and the House Minority Leader, and he had some very pragmatic things to say about the chances Democratic legislative candidat...
Aug 02, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Rep. Kelly Armstrong, who is currently in the midst of a campaign to become North Dakota's next governor, has had a long career in public service. On this episode of Plain Talk, he told my co-host Chad Oban and I what his proudest moment has been from that career (so far, he's still a young man in political years). He said it was helping his hometown, Dickinson, build a new baseball complex. It was a reminder that Armstrong's track record of public service didn't begin in elected office. In fact...
Jul 31, 2024•1 hr 5 min
In 2018, North Dakota voters approved a ballot measure creating the state Ethics Commission. The commission was implemented in 2019, and that first year, it received just 2 complaints. There were 3 in 2020, 9 in 2021, then a spike (right around election time) in 2022 to 14. There were 14 complaints again in 2023, and so far in 2024 (another election year) the number has spiked to 25 as of July 25. Those numbers came from Rebecca Binstock, the executive director of the ethics commission, who join...
Jul 26, 2024•1 hr 8 min
Many Republicans are trying to argue that President Joe Biden opting to end his re-election campaign, and the subsequent consolidation of Democrats behind the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris, was a "coup." Was it? My co-host Chad Oban and I discussed it on this episode of Plain Talk, where we were also joined by Trista Keith, a now-former member of the Dickinson State University nursing faculty. That faculty has resigned, and the administration at DSU has moved on, opting to use person...
Jul 24, 2024•1 hr 4 min
When President Joe Biden announced an end to his re-election campaign, Adam Goldwyn, chairman of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL, participated in a call with his counterparts from around the country that resulted in a unanimous endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris to replace the incumbent at the top of the party's national ticket. "There was overwhelming support for her in that group," Goldwyn told me and my co-host Chad Oban on this episode of Plain Talk. Responding to complaints from Re...
Jul 22, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Dickinson State University, one of the North Dakota University System's four-year institutions, has been thrown into chaos by a labor dispute with a group of nursing faculty. First the faculty, after rejecting a new contract aimed at tamping down what DSU President Stephen Easton too much spending on a program that produces too few students, chose to resign en masse. Then Easton himself tendered his resignation alongside a lengthy statement in which he defended his approach to the dispute. "The ...
Jul 19, 2024•1 hr 25 min
Sandi Sanford, chair of the North Dakota Republican Party, joined this episode of Plain Talk from the GOP's national convention in Milwaukee, where, she said, "the security plan changed drastically" after the attempted assassination of the party's presidential candidate Donald Trump. Republicans have been focused on unity at this event -- two of Trump's top rivals during the primaries, Gov. Ron DeSantis and former ambassador Nikki Haley, endorsed him in speeches at the convention -- but Sanford ...
Jul 17, 2024•1 hr 10 min
Gov. Doug Burgum has gone through a "transformation." That's what reporter Stephen Rodrick said on this episode of Plain Talk. He spent a lot of time in North Dakota for a profile of Burgum published recently by Politico. He wrote that the governor has been "rebranding" on his way to a potential place on former President Donald Trump's national ticket. That means that Burgum has, along the arc of his political career, but a lot of different things to different people. What Rodrick found, talking...
Jul 12, 2024•1 hr 8 min
Senate Majority Leader David Houge, a Republican from Minot, says that if voters approve a ballot measure eliminating property taxes, state lawmakers will be left with a mess. He said that the legislature's appropriators will be tasked with making big spending cuts. He said that members of the taxation and finance committees will have to find new ways to bring in revenues. He also said that reserve funds would likely have to be tapped to make up the roughly $2.6 billion in revenues property taxe...
Jul 10, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Disgraced former state Sen. Ray Holmberg has indicated, through his legal counsel, that he will be pleading guilty to federal criminal charges related to international travel to solicit sex with children. "When that happens," Attorney General Drew Wrigley said on this episode of Plain Talk, "everything that we have becomes a public record." An untold number of public documents, including email messages and more, are currently inaccessible by the news media and the public due to state law that ex...
Jul 03, 2024•1 hr 11 min
We covered a lot of ground on this episode of Plain Talk. Rep. Brandy Pyle, a Republican from Casselton, joined to talk about her efforts to curb distractions from devices in the legislative committee she chairs, and to talk about the struggles our society is having with our phone addictions. North Dakota University System Chancellor Mark Hagerott also joined to discuss the State Board of Higher Education's decision to move on from his leadership. Hagerott characterized it as an amicable transit...
Jun 28, 2024•1 hr 26 min
The signature turn-in deadline for the committee backing a ballot measure to abolish North Dakota's tax on property value (but not, it's important to note, other types of property taxes) arrives on Saturday, June 29. The committee is expected to turn in the requisite number of signatures, which, if they pass muster, will kick off a repeat of a debate over property taxes voters here have had before. In 2012 a similar proposal to eliminate the tax on property value was put before voters, and it fa...
Jun 26, 2024•59 min
North Dakota's primary elecitons this year were brutal. Attack ads and dirty tricks are endemic to politics, but I think most people would admit that, by the standards of our state, the Republican campaigns in this cycle were rough. In legislative races, we saw ads suggesting that some incumbent lawmakers promote pornography to children, or that they would be unsafe to allow your children around. In the U.S. House primary, some unknown entity supporting Rick Becker's campaign was sending out tex...
Jun 14, 2024•1 hr 8 min
"We knew we wanted to stay positive and above board," Republican U.S. House nominee Julie Fedorchak said on this episode of Plain Talk. Fedorchak just emerged from a bruising competition against former state lawmaker Rick Becker and three other candidates with a resounding victory. She received nearly 50% of the vote in a five-way race. The race was a nasty one. In the final days text messages in support of Becker (thought he candidate has denied involvement) disseminated false information, incl...
Jun 12, 2024•56 min
Will a ballot measure putting age limits on North Dakota's congressional delegation, and printing candidate ages on the ballot, be approved by voters? Will MAGA-aligned populists gain ground against traditional Republican legislators in the North Dakota Republican party's primaries? Who will win the NDGOP's primaries for governor and U.S. House? Can Democratic-NPL candidates across the state build enough momentum to be competitive in the general election? My co-host Chad Oban and I make our pred...
Jun 07, 2024•55 min
Due to a scheduling mix-up with Attorney General Drew Wrigley -- he was coming on to discuss North Dakota's legal position in redistricting lawsuits -- this episode of Plain Talk was truncated. Still, despite the shorter show, we covered some good ground. Me and my co-host Chad Oban talked about the top election official in one of North Dakota's most populous counties winning a gift from U.S. House candidate Rick Becker's campaign. We also had Bismarck resident Lance Hagen on to discuss his FEC ...
Jun 05, 2024•35 min
When we booked U.S. Rep. Kelly Armstrong for this episode of Plain Talk, we weren't planning on talking about Donald Trump. The plan was to get Armstrong's reactions to polls showing a prohibitive lead for him over Lt. Gov. Tammy Miller in the Republican gubernatorial primary. The plan was to discuss the debate the Greater North Dakota Chamber of Commerce just hosted between him and Miller. But then a New York jury convicted Trump on 34 criminal counts, and we were obliged to talk to Armstrong a...
May 31, 2024•1 hr 5 min
U.S. House candidate Alex Balazs is still set on winning. On this episode of Plain Talk, he told me and co-host Chad Oban that he plans to finish the last two weeks of his primary campaign strong. There will be ads and billboards and travel, and the candidate, who received the North Dakota Republican Party's convention endorsement in April, thinks he can win, despite polls showing him in a distant 4th place. But if he doesn't, would he stay involved in politics? "I just don't know," he said. Bal...
May 29, 2024•1 hr 4 min
"I've been an outside viewer," Dustin McNally, a Republican candidate for the state Senate in Grand Forks-area District 42, said on this episode of Plain Talk. "I haven't really liked what I've seen. McNally was speaking about what he's been seeing from North Dakota's Legislature. "It's a lot of negative news. It's a lot of changes in the Republican party, and not for the better," he said. "I feel like they're not working for me," he added. "I feel like they're working for themselves." "People a...
May 24, 2024•58 min
U.S. House candidate Rick Becker recently took the unusual step of paying internet personality and trans rights activist Dylan Mulvaney to record a message praising the energy record of his primary rival, Public Service Commisisoner Julie Fedorchak. The message was done tongue-in-cheek -- though it hasn't sat well with some elements of the MAGA movement who take exception to Becker working with Mulvaney in even a joking way -- but Becker used it to attack Fedorchak's record on coal issues. "What...
May 22, 2024•1 hr 2 min
A civil war is playing out in the North Dakota Republican Party between traditionally conservative Republicans and MAGA-aligned populists. One front in that war is the NDGOP's legislative primaries, where a group called Citizens Alliance of North Dakota is trying to defeat traditional Republicans. State Rep. Brandon Prichard, a Republican from Bismarck, is the executive director of Citizens Alliance. His group has been sending mailers to voters suggesting that its preferred candidates in the pri...
May 17, 2024•1 hr 3 min
"I like debates," Public Service Commissioner Julie Fedorhcak told me and co-host Chad Oban on this episode of Plain Talk. Fedorchak has come under fire from some of her opponents in the Republican U.S. House primary. Three of them — Rick Becker, Cara Mund, and Alex Balazs — participated in a recent debate sponsored by BEK Television. Fedorchak did not. "Last weekend was a balancing act," she said, noting that she's already participated in one debate with her opponents, with two more planned. Sh...
May 15, 2024•57 min
Pat Finken is a long-time political consultant in North Dakota who now heads up an independent political action committee called the Brighter Future Alliance. Finken and his group have come under fire from U.S. House candidate Rick Becker and his allies for mailers attacking Becker and his voting record. Finken joined this episode of Plain Talk my me and my co-host Chad Oban, and said his goal is to reveal for the public that Becker is a "show pony." "He is not a serious legislator," Finken adde...
May 10, 2024•1 hr 3 min
The State of North Dakota is back in court over redistricting. This time, the state is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a lower court decision that the state had previously argued for. Specifically, the dismissal of a lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of legislative subdistricts created by lawmakers in an attempt to enhance the state's Native American vote in two districts. The courts ended up striking down that map anyway and replacing it with a new one, but this separate legal ...
May 08, 2024•1 hr 3 min
Racial incidents keep happening at North Dakota school events. At basketball games. Proms. Hockey games. Part of the problem is, we don't know if they're happening more, or less. Maybe we're just noticing them more now that everyone has a smartphone in their pocket and the ability to document the taunts and jeers and boorish behavior. State Rep. Jayme Davis is a Democrat from District 9a, which covers the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation. In the state House of Representatives, she's the minori...
May 03, 2024•1 hr 7 min
"I'm sympathetic to what they're doing while recognizing there's a better way to do it." Those are the words of Jason Bohrer, president of the North Dakota Lignite Energy Council, and advocacy and lobbying group that represents the state's coal industry. He was speaking on this episode of Plain Talk about the Midwest Carbon Express pipeline proposed by Summit Carbon Solutions. That project has no ties to the coal industry. Rather, it seeks to bring carbon emissions gathered from ethanol plans ac...
May 01, 2024•1 hr 34 min
Marijuana is already legal in North Dakota. At least for medicinal reasons. But the backers of a new ballot measure want recreational use of marijuana to be legal as well. The campaign is calling itself New Economic Frontier. Their measure was just approved by the North Dakota Secretary of State's office for circulation. They have until July 8 to get it on the November ballot, though if they miss that deadline they'll still have a year from the date they began collecting signatures to qualify fo...
Apr 26, 2024•1 hr 3 min
