“This is actually town hall number six for us. We started back in May, traveling all over the state and now we are at Mayville State.”
Cheryl Biller is executive director of the North Dakota Dem-NPL party.
“So our candidates are very interested in talking to the people in North Dakota. They feel like it's important that they earn the vote of North Dakotans, and they know no better way than to go out and see them where they are and where they live, and to hear from them.”
Biller says the events held so far have seen audiences of 30 to 70 people. Tonight, there's roughly 40 people in the auditorium. As far as who is taking part…
“It's a lot of the party faithful, but it's a few Independents. And last night at our event we had four Republicans who came because they are not happy with their own party and wanted to hear from ours.”
And, of course, when an executive of a political party says something like that it bears some questioning...
“It's been a really interesting year this year seeing the different groups within each party who are deciding that it's time to work together to accomplish common goals.”
The panel of candidates included those from the eight statewide positions including the candidate for US House and, as Biller puts it, one “bonus guest.”
“My name is Nicholas Grunwald. I'm running for District 20 House of Representatives. I ran back in 2018 — it was District 19 back then, the name has changed with redistricting, but it's the same general geographic area.”
Grunwald says he wasn't expecting to be on the ballot. He says the incumbent representative stepped down from the position, prompting this year's special election. Now that he's on the ballot, and in the thick of the campaign season, he says he wasn't as prepared for this run as he was the first time.
But he says even in a Republican supermajority state he's giving it his best in flipping the seat from red to blue.
“I think this is maybe the only rural district — a quasi-rural district — that has a chance. You know, we've got Larimore, Northwood, Mayville, Hillsboro. It's rural, but it's it's kind of ‘small-town rural’ and being sandwiched between Fargo and Grand Forks here... It's not Slope County, you know, it's not Minot, and so I think there's a chance this district — at least this Traill County district had Democrats not that long ago. And so I think there's a chance especially in this environment this year.”
What's the focus right now?
“A lot of people are talking about cost of living, data centers is a big one in in Traill County here the Riverview dairy with 25,000 head of cattle, there's just a lot of kind of macro things. Obviously the price of fuel is a big one. But there's there's things that I wouldn't be able to control as a legislator. The things that I could control, if I were elected, are data center placement, non-disclosure agreements for local jurisdictions, property tax… the things like that that would have a real meaningful effect.”
Grunwald and his Republican challenger Dave Rustebakke have just over a month to make their case to district 20 voters.
