Heitkamp Ad Shows the Red State Blues

By Shane Goldmacher  //  March 30, 2012 | 12:41 p.m.

Heidi Heitkamp is a Democrat running for U.S. Senate in the very red state of North Dakota. But you wouldn't know it from the new ad she rolled outon Friday, which puts a soft-focus lens on her up-from-the-bootstraps biography while making no mention of her party affiliation.

She's from a small town, as she says in the ad: "Some people don't think it's much, but to us it's home." Her mother was a school janitor. And "dad never finished high school." Her siblings? "All seven kids went to college" and she "worked her way through on a road construction crew."

The fact that the former North Dakota attorney general is a Democrat isn't just missing from the ad, it's virtually absent from her website too, buried on the third page of a five-page biography - and even then it only appears in someone else's quote.

The ad buy, which amounts to $37,000 for week-long buy according to someone familiar with the purchase, comes as North Dakota Republicans gather for their GOP state convention.

The challenge for Heitkamp, whom Democrats have touted as a top-flight recruit to keep a Senate seat in a GOP stronghold, is that her party is likely to lose the state at the presidential level badly. In the sweep of 2008, Barack Obama still lost North Dakota to Sen. John McCain by eight percentage points. This year, Heitkamp is running against Republican Rep. Rick Berg, who likely only has to match his party nominee's electoral performance. Heitkamp may have to best Obama's showing by double-digits. It's no wonder she promises to be an "independent voice" in Washington and avoids calling herself a Democrat on the state's airwaves.

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