FARGO — Kevin Cramer is the first Republican in his lifetime to hold his U.S. Senate seat.
At 63 years old, Cramer has been actively involved in state GOP politics for over 40 years and vividly remembers the late 1980s, when he worked for the state Republican party and Democrats held most of North Dakota’s state and federal elected offices.
So, during this year’s GOP state convention in Fargo, Cramer found himself spending a lot of time warning his fellow Republicans not to be over-assured going into the 2024 election, despite the party’s dominance over the last few cycles.
“It’s one of the things I preach against — we aren’t entitled to these jobs just because we are Republicans,” Cramer said.
Cramer ousted Heidi Heitkamp from the seat in one of the nation’s most closely watched races six years ago, and while 2024 will be his first run as a Senate incumbent, he’s run as an incumbent before — including twice for the U.S. House and, before that, for the state’s Public Service Commission.
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“It is different being an incumbent,” he said. “I would say this: it’s a little more relaxing, and yet I can’t relax. It’s nice to have a significant lead in fundraising and name recognition and to have a record to run on. But I do run scared, and can’t wait for it to be over.”
When asked what was different about voters in 2024, Cramer immediately pointed to the advent of what he called “the super-informed voter,” making sure to distinguish them from well-informed voters.
“Two guys stopped me in the hallway today and asked, ‘Why did you vote to impeach Donald Trump?’ and I told them I never voted to impeach Donald Trump — do you think Donald Trump would endorse me if I voted to impeach him? And they said ‘Well, it was on the internet,’ — that’s what I mean by ‘super-informed,’ ” he said laughing.
Even so, he said, he’s always glad for the opportunity to engage with constituents.
“Part of this job that I rather like is the interaction with people. And that means you, that means the national media, that means one-on-one, that means walking through Menards,” he said.
The border crisis and the deal that died
Cramer said voters’ concerns are still largely the same in 2024 as they were six years ago, but he said there is more urgency, and that the migrant crisis at the border continues to be a top issue.
“For a lot of people, they’re very frustrated, understandably — not just by the fact that there’s more than a couple million people walking into our country illegally, but by the type of people and the fact that there’s seemingly no interest on the Biden administration’s part to try and stop it, and they’re frustrated that Congress isn’t doing more about it,” he said.
Earlier this year, a deal that would have authorized $20 billion in emergency funding for increased border security and a trigger mechanism to effectively “shut down” the border died in the Senate.
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The deal was brokered by Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford, who Cramer calls one of his “very best friends in the Senate.” Cramer initially expressed some support for the deal.
“I got a lot of attention from national media for it because I was willing to defend James Lankford’s efforts. I tried to point out some of the things that were being said about it that weren't true like, ‘Oh, this is going to codify 5,000 illegal immigrants a day,’ — that was fundamentally untrue,” he said.
Political talk show host Laura Ingraham interviewed Cramer during the debate, claiming at one point that he would be providing cover for Biden if he supported the deal.
“But she picked the wrong issue to fight me on. She said, ‘What would 500 North Dakotans at a Kevin Cramer town hall say to you if you said you’re considering voting for a bill that would allow 50,000 more work visas?' I said, they’d say, ‘Can they work in the Bakken? Can they work in the fields? And can they do surgery? We’ll take them all.’ That's what they would say,” he said.
Cramer ultimately joined nearly all Senate Republicans in blocking the deal. He said there was some legitimacy to the argument that former President Donald Trump’s call for lawmakers to block it in a statement that read in part, “A Border Deal now would be another Gift to the Radical Left Democrats,” had an effect.
“President Trump’s speaking to it was part of the issue, although I don’t know that it was ever going to pass in the House. When it became so volatile and when there was zero chance it would pass was when the Speaker of the House — prior to the bill being done, or at least within hours of the bill being posted — said it’s dead on arrival,” he said. “Then there was no point in moving forward, no point in spending political capital on it — and I think that was unfortunate. People wanted us to deal with it. They expected us to deal with it.”
Cramer said if the bill had been brought up earlier it might’ve had a chance to pass, and that waiting until an election year was likely its undoing. Still, he said he doesn’t cast votes based on how it would make a president look.
“I said that very same thing to Donald Trump when he called me about the bipartisan infrastructure deal, which I helped shape significantly. We got a lot of big victories out of that. I said, ‘Sir, I am not going to vote for this because it’s good for Joe Biden, but because it’s good for North Dakota,’ and he said, ‘Well, you know what’s best for North Dakota more than I do,’ and that was that,” Cramer said.
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The evolving Republican party
Cramer said being a student of history has been a key to his success.
“People say I have great instincts — I just understand North Dakota’s history,” he said.
He said he paid close attention when a new generation of farmers started taking over their family farms while he was the state’s economic development director in the late 1990s, and especially when he served on the Public Service Commission from 2003 to 2012.
“They were building their own bins, storing their own grain, following the prices in Argentina, Australia and Brazil, and they were diversifying. They were marketing their own product and didn’t demand so much of the federal government — they wanted a more modest federal government,” he said. “That sentiment — that populism, that independent streak that North Dakota has always been known for — was working against the traditional Democratic Farm Bill, price support, direct payment system.”
He attributed Ed Schafer as being the first to give a powerful voice to that new generation as the state’s governor from 1992 to 2000, getting rid of state regulations and providing a counter-narrative to the state’s all-Democratic federal delegation. Cramer said Schafer made people rethink their politics.
But in recent years, the party has shifted further to the right. Schafer, who went on to serve as the Secretary of Agriculture under President George W. Bush, recently lost a bid to get on a GOP precinct committee in District 46, one of a number of recent signals to some longtime political watchers in the state that a more extreme element has taken control of the party.
When asked if today’s Republican party can still be deemed a legacy of Schafer, Cramer demurred.
“Our tent is so big,” Cramer said. “The strength of our party is our diversity, as long as we manage it well. You have the populist streak in our party, you have the isolationist streak, you have the more traditional Chamber of Commerce, smaller government faction, but they’re our people. And what I would say to Ed is: thank God we have all these people in our tent.”
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‘I have always thought of us as blessed’
In December, Cramer’s 43-year-old son, Ian, was involved in a high-speed chase with law enforcement during which he is accused of hitting and killing Mercer County Sheriff’s Deputy Paul Martin. Cramer noted that while Ian would be on trial in July, he didn’t anticipate it would impact his campaign significantly.
When asked about how the incident has impacted him personally, Cramer reflected on a news story he read about it.
“I read the story, and in it, it says ‘Tragedy is not new to this family.’ And then it talks about our adopted son, Abel, who watched his mother being murdered, and our son Ike dying. And then this. And I thought … I have never thought of our family that way. I’ve always thought of us as blessed,” he said. “Still, our grief is still real. It’s as real as it could possibly be.”
He said that, if anything, Ian’s crash made him realize how good people in North Dakota can be.
"I hope I don’t get too emotional, but if I do, that’s OK. ... Do you know two of the very first people who reached out to me after it happened were Kent Conrad and Heidi Heitkamp?” Cramer said, referring to his competitor in 2018 and her predecessor in the Senate. “We’re so blessed to come from here.”
The call of the Senate
As for serving in the Senate, Cramer said he initially resisted challenging Heitkamp in 2018, despite Trump calling him to the Oval Office and urging him to run.
“When Donald Trump said to me, ‘I love your work in the House but, Kevin, you have to admit senators are more powerful.’ And I said that’s the part I don’t like, sir. I prefer persuasion to power,” he said.
But, Cramer said, serving in the Senate has been rewarding, particularly the unexpected friendships he’s made across the aisle.
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A group of North Dakota high school students visiting the Capitol recently witnessed one unlikely kinship firsthand.
“I was speaking to them out on the Capitol steps and Sen. Alex Padilla (a California Democrat) came over and he put his arm around me and he said to the kids, ‘I want you to know, this is my best Republican friend.’ And I said, ‘Let me tell you about Alex: He makes his own salsa, he’s an expert, he cuts up his own peppers. And he always shares it with me — we go to prayer breakfast together and we put it on our eggs,’ ” Cramer said.
It's nice to have a significant lead in fundraising and name recognition and to have a record to run on. But I do run scared, and can't wait for it to be over.
While Cramer has a reputation as a staunch partisan, he said one of his proudest accomplishments in the Senate was being given the Legislative Action medal by the Bipartisan Policy Council for his work across the aisle last session.
Cramer said being in the Senate suits his style after all.
“Because of the six-year terms, and the 60-vote threshold, and the capacity of one senator to obstruct so effectively, you cannot burn bridges there,” he said. “Bridges are invaluable to your success, unless your only interest is in burning the place down. I reject the notion that every transaction requires a loser — you can’t govern that way.”
The Trust Project
