Hi jinks in Senate Race - Valley News Live - KVLY/KXJB - Fargo/Grand Forks

Even though it is election day, plenty of hi jinks in the North Dakota U.S. Senate race.

First, our newsroom got an email titled, "New Campaign Logos for Heidi Heitkamp".

Inside, were several altered Logos resembling those used by Heitkamp's campaign with the words "for North Dakota" x-ed out and replaced with "An amazing Barack Obama", "Harry Reid" and "Obamacare".

The spoof came from crossroads.org, the Karl Rove campaign group.

The Heitkamp campaign, confident in tonight's primary election (especially since she has no opposition), released a video which recycles undercover video we highlighted a few weeks ago showing Rick Berg struggling to find out what the minimum wage is.

SEE VIDEO ABOVE

Chris Van Guilder, spokesman for the Berg campaign fired off this email in response:

Shortly after announcing her candidacy for the US Senate, Heidi Heitkamp said in January 2012 that this campaign "can't be about sound bites and about gotchas"(Great Plains Examiner, January 30, 2012).

 Just a few short months later, Heidi Heitkamp has come a long way from her initial positive tone . Today, the Heitkamp campaign released its latest personal attack on Rick Berg, complete with an undercover political operative, "gotcha" games, context-free editing, and sensationalized reporting from her allies at the Huffington Post and MSNBC.

Heidi's latest video makes clear that she was either intentionally misleading voters with her January comments, or she has pulled a complete reversal in her campaign for the United States Senate. Either way, North Dakotans deserve more than this increasingly negative campaign from Heidi Heitkamp.

 The information Heidi's team conveniently left out of their latest ad regarding a minimum wage question posed to Rick is as follows:

• The questioner presented herself as a student looking for more information.
• As Heidi's video makes clear, this was part of a plan by Heitkamp to use the "student" charade to coordinate a "gotcha" moment against Rick Berg.
• As it turned out, Rick's efforts to get as much complete, accurate information to this "student" were distorted into this now misleading, personal and negative attack video.
• What you also won't see in this clipped video is that Rick knew the questioned wage within cents of its actual amount, he explained that for some professions the wage would be different, and then went to double check to in order to give the student a thoroughly accurate answer.

Heidi must have known that running from her support of Barack Obama and Obamacare would be difficult, but it's clear she's already resorting to complete distractions and "gotchas" to distract North Dakotans. Unfortunately, these latest actions only further illustrate Heidi's habit of running from her record and saying one thing but doing another.

 As Heidi said earlier, we need "leadership that cares more about the country than winning a political fight" (The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, March 17, 2012).

 North Dakotans would agree, and Rick Berg will continue to lead while Heidi Heitkamp continues her partisan, negative, political fights.

 Thank you,

Chris

 Rick Berg for Senate