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Last Updated June 22, 2005
Byron Dorgan, North Dakota's junior senator, was first elected to the House in 1980 and to the Senate in 1992. Dorgan grew up in Regent, North Dakota (population 268), where his family had a farm equipment and petroleum business and raised cattle and horses; he was one of nine students in his high school graduating class. After college and business school he worked for a Denver aerospace firm, then in 1969, at 26, was appointed state tax commissioner. His politics are very much out of the Non-Partisan League tradition: He has a strong mistrust of economic markets, a deep belief that government should intervene to protect the family farmer and small businessman, and a capacity to frame issues in a popular and unthreatening way. His first big issue, as tax commissioner, was taxing out-of-state corporations, which struck a chord in a state always hostile to big out-of-state money. To his work Dorgan brought the zest and cornball good humor that New Deal enthusiasts liked to summon up when liberals thought they represented the ordinary, inarticulate little guy, in contrast to the conservatives seen as old stuffed shirts. Dorgan ran for the House in 1974, and lost to Republican Mark Andrews. In 1980, when Andrews ran for the Senate, Dorgan was elected to the House. His lowest reelection percentage in a House race was 65%, in 1990 against Ed Schafer, who was elected governor in 1992 and 1996. Dorgan declined to challenge Andrews for the Senate in 1986, a race his successor as tax commissioner, Kent Conrad won, and he declined to take on 80-year-old fellow-Democrat Quentin Burdick in 1988. Only with Conrad's surprise decision not to run for re-election in 1992 did Dorgan finally run for the Senate. He and his Republican opponent both backed normal trade relations with China (a major buyer of North Dakota wheat), but remained wary of free trade otherwise. Dorgan won by a solid 59%-39% margin. In the Senate, Dorgan's voting record has been very much the same as Conrad's; this is one case where senators of the same party from the same state have worked harmoniously together. They call themselves and Congressman Earl Pomeroy "Team North Dakota." Dorgan strongly backed fellow Dakotan Tom Daschle for Senate Democratic leader in 1994, and became an assistant floor leader; he considered running for whip against Harry Reid four years later, but withdrew. In December 1998 he became co-chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee. In 2004, when Daschle was defeated and it quickly became apparent that Whip Harry Reid had the votes to succeed him as minority leader, Dorgan started running for whip, but quickly dropped out when it was clear Richard Durbin had the votes. "It seemed to me that a number of our members felt that, for our two top spots, at least one should be from a blue state," he said. Reid suggested that he might run for Democratic National Chairman, but he soon decided not to. Dorgan continues to be a champion of family farms, even as their numbers decline. He backed the big crop insurance and disaster relief packages starting in 1997. On the 2002 farm bill, he and Charles Grassley led the move to limit farm subsidies. He argued that too much would go to a few rich farmers and feared that such payments would build opposition to the farm bill as a whole; anyway, not many North Dakota or Iowa farmers qualify for huge payments. It failed in committee, opposed by senators from states with big cotton and rice farms, but in February 2002, the Senate passed by voice vote a limit of $275,000 per farmer. Throughout Dorgan's record one sees a traditional North Dakota distrust of economic markets. During the 1990s he often criticized Alan Greenspan for backing high interest rates and he was one of four senators to vote against his reconfirmation as Federal Reserve chairman in February 2000. He wants a more vigorous antitrust policy; he called for an 18-month moratorium on agribusiness mergers in 1999 and a two-year moratorium on airline mergers in 2001. He opposes individual investment accounts for Social Security and opposed full repeal of the estate tax. With Olympia Snowe, he sponsored the successful repeal of the FCC's media concentration rules which would allow companies to own more stations. In the Commerce Committee he succeeded in amending John Sununu's bill to exempt VOIP communications from state regulations for three years with amendments upholding state universal service fund fees and requiring payment of access charges to local telephone companies. Dorgan has been a prime mover in scaling back the embargo on Cuba. In 2004 he attacked the Bush administration proposal to require Cuban purchasers to make payments before goods were shipped. Dorgan has worked closely with Conrad on water issues: They worked to limit the drawdown on Lake Sakakawea in the Missouri River and fought Missouri's senators who wanted more water let out to keep the barges floating on the river in their state. In 2004 he sponsored a bill to allow the import of Canadian pesticides and herbicides even if not approved by EPA. Dorgan has been a backer of wind energy projects, in which North Dakota leads the nation. He has worked for several years to create a Red River Valley Research Corridor, to link North Dakota colleges and businesses with federal research contracts. He claims to have provided $100 million in research contracts and hailed in 2002 the groundbreaking of the Alien Technology plant in Fargo, near North Dakota State University. Into the November 2004 omnibus appropriation he inserted $3 million for a hydrogen fuel cell research center at the University of North Dakota. In the March 2004 budget resolution he got some $2.2 billion for a New Homestead Act--venture capital investments in startups and expanding businesses in rural counties with more than 10% population loss over 20 years. With Ron Wyden, he passed the law banning butane lighters on airliners. Dorgan was easily re-elected in 1998 and 2004. In 1998 he beat state Senator Donna Nalewaja 63%-35%, carrying every county but one in which the vote was tied. After the 2002 election, national Republicans tried to recruit former Governor Ed Schafer, but he declined to run. The Republican nominee, rancher Mike Liffrig, attracted some attention in September with two ads, one attacking Dorgan for supporting human cloning (he altered a bill he sponsored in response), the other portraying couples at the altar and then showing two men in black ties about to kiss each other and pairs of men and women getting married. "You can kiss our North Dakota values goodbye or you can kiss Senator Dorgan goodbye," the voiceover said. Dorgan, who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 and against the Family Marriage Amendment in 2004, was not badly hurt; he ran ads featuring condemnation of the Liffrig ads by the Fargo Forum and Grand Forks Herald. With far more money and 32 years of winning statewide races, Dorgan won 68%-32%. This time he carried every county.
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