Former Sen. Heitkamp believes Biden will bring our country a ‘rural renaissance’

NORTH DAKOTA – Since leaving the Senate in January 2019, Heidi Heitkamp has been fighting to get Democrats in rural areas elected through her organization One Country Project.

The Democrat  feels Joe Biden will do more for our part of the country than President Donald Trump.

The biggest issue concerning voters this year is the coronavirus pandemic. More than 219,000 Americans and more than 400 North Dakotans who had Covid-19 have died.

Former North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp says what President Trump and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum are doing to slow the spread of the virus isn’t working.

“We need to get this right and we need to get it right sooner rather than later. And, so, you know, I think people can look at the numbers and make a decision on their own on whether this the strategies that they’ve been pursuing have worked,” Heitkamp said.

President Trump believes he’s handled the pandemic the right way by not allowing travel to and from China beginning in February.

“I put on a travel ban far earlier than Dr. Fauci thought it was necessary, who I like. Far earlier than the scientists. I was actually the only one that wanted to put it on and I did it, actually, against the advice of a lot of people,” Trump said.

Heitkamp believes Joe Biden is the right person to lead the country forward during the pandemic because of his time as Vice President fighting an ebola outbreak in Africa.

“The administration ran by Joe Biden ran a strategy that literally contained it in Africa, tried to do everything they could to prevent the spread out of Africa,” Heitkamp explained.

Many people are voting for President Trump because they feel he has done a better job improving than the economy than Biden could. Heitkamp doesn’t agree with that line of thinking.

“Everybody forgets that about this time last year, we saw GDP slow substantially and we were talking about going into recession even before covid,” Heitkamp said.

Through One Country Project, Heitkamp has been educating Democratic candidates on the importance of issues facing rural America. She says Minnesotans have a big say in how rural America is run this November.

“Minnesota 7 has a really significant role in what happens with rural America and if you don’t return Collin Peterson to the United States House of Representatives, that’s a huge mistake. This guy has forgotten more about farm bills than anyone has ever known,” Heitkamp said.

Congressman Peterson’s challenger, former Minnesota Lieutanant Governor Michelle Fischbach, believes she should represent Western Minnesota in Washington because she’ll fight to advance the president’s agenda.

“Making sure that we get the economy going again. We make sure that we are moving things forward because things were going so well before the covid,” Fischbach said.