Her position underscores the fragility of the Senate Democratic majority. Heitkamp defends gun vote

Heidi Heitkamp’s office was flooded with calls from North Dakotans in the run-up to last week’s high-profile vote to expand background checks on gun purchasers.

The overwhelming consensus: Vote no.


In an interview in her office this week, the freshman Democrat defended the biggest vote of her young Senate career, when she joined with three other Democrats and most Senate Republicans to oppose expanding background checks during commercial gun sales.

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“I think I always had a reputation as somebody who will listen, somebody who is pretty independent-minded but also believes that at the end of the day, you got to listen to your constituents,” Heitkamp said. “In this office, the calls literally were before the last day at least 7 to 1 against that bill. This was after a series of very extensive ad campaigns done in my state saying call me and tell me to support it.”

Heitkamp’s opposition came after intense lobbying by President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly — and families of the victims from the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School last year. The vote turned Heitkamp from an unexpected victor of a 2012 Senate race to a liberal punching bag, fielding a sharp jab from Obama’s former chief of staff, Bill Daley, who demanded a refund of his campaign donation.

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It all amounted to an unusual amount of attention for a woman who hailed from a town of 90 people, hadn’t held an elected office for a dozen years and is so new to the Senate that she is still cramped in a small ground-level temporary office. But Heitkamp’s vote last week serves as a stark reminder that Obama’s domestic agenda rests largely on wooing both Republicans and red-state Democrats who are unafraid to buck their party.

Heitkamp said that she may have “disappointed” many, but she heard an outpouring of opposition back home that she couldn’t ignore, forcing her to cast a critical vote against the plan.

Asked about polls showing more than 90 percent of voters supporting expanded background checks, including back home, Heitkamp doubted that was truly indicative of public opinion. She compared the polls to her improbable Senate win showing her down double digits to Republican Rick Berg just weeks before Election Day.

“That wasn’t true either,” she quipped.

“There was a lot of concern in North Dakota that there is always this push for one size fits all,” she said. “North Dakota has one of the highest rates of gun ownership and the lowest rate of gun violence. And I think people there look at this from the standpoint that: This is my Second Amendment right. This is part of our culture in North Dakota. And they expressed those opinions to me pretty loud and clear.”

Heitkamp’s position underscores the fragility of the Senate Democratic majority and the constant challenges facing Obama’s second-term agenda. In order to keep their Senate majority, Democrats recruited moderates like Heitkamp who could be elected in red states. But those same Democrats are hardly reliable votes for Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) as they try to usher through an agenda on guns, immigration and the deficit before the 2014 midterm elections dominate the national landscape.

Heitkamp is signaling early in her tenure that she won’t be a reliable vote for her party, whether it’s on energy, cutting the deficit or guns. Of the four Democrats who opposed background checks, Heitkamp was the only one not up for reelection next year. (Another “no” vote, Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, subsequently announced his decision to retire rather than run for reelection.)

“I understand how difficult in that area it is because of the gun culture,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a co-sponsor of the background checks plan, saying there was a “lot of misinformation” dumped into North Dakota. “Now we need to get the facts in that state to give her the support she needs.”

Heitkamp cast her vote after considerable pressure from pro-gun control advocates this month. In a tense meeting in Reid’s office, Giffords — the former Arizona congresswoman who was gravely injured in a 2011 shooting — and her husband made a personal plea to support the proposal, sponsored by Manchin and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). They and their staff argued that the phone calls Heitkamp received were not indicative of the widespread support for the proposal, saying she was mainly hearing by phone from a vocal minority of voters, many of whom were organized by the National Rifle Association, according to a person familiar with the session.

But Heitkamp held firm in the meeting — as she did in another 45-minute session with about five families from victims of the Sandy Hook killings. A person familiar with that meeting described it as respectful exchange, but the victims came away convinced Heitkamp was ready to oppose them on background checks. Heitkamp would only say they were “very, very difficult” meetings.

Immediately after her vote last week, Heitkamp was the target of fierce backlash from her party. Daley said the North Dakota freshman “betrayed” him and demanded the $2,500 back that he donated to her campaign last fall. Gun control groups expressed outrage, and Senate liberals were perplexed.

“It’s hard for me to understand how any senator — Republican or Democratic — could vote against something that is supported by 90 percent of the American people,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). “That is just a question I cannot understand.”

Reid said Wednesday he didn’t personally appeal to Heitkamp before the vote in an attempt to change her mind, though he suggested he’d now make an attempt to win her support by making changes to the proposal.

“I was hoping she would vote with us,” Reid told POLITICO. “She’s a very courageous woman, and I’m sure we’ll work something out on the guns issue, and she’ll be able to vote with us.”

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s pro-gun control group dumped nearly $180,000 into

North Dakota’s inexpensive media markets as part of its $12 million nationwide ad campaign, according to a source tracking the buys. The group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, commissioned an early February poll showing that 94 percent of North Dakota voters supported background checks for all gun purchasers.

“Sen. Heitkamp’s vote not only betrayed her constituents — it blocked a common-sense reform that a majority of the U.S. Senate voted for that would have saved lives and protected our communities,” said Erika Soto Lamb, a spokeswoman for the group.

But Heitkamp suggested Bloomberg’s media campaign backfired in her state.

“People look at that and say, ‘He’s the mayor of New York City, what does he know about North Dakota?’ I’m not kidding,” Hetikamp said.

But she acknowledged there were justifiable concerns as well.

“There are people in North Dakota who feel pretty strongly that my vote was wrong — I don’t want to diminish their passion for trying to do something that will stop these horrible things from happening,” Heitkamp said. “My frustration is nothing in that bill would have prevented any one of the three very high-profile shootings that we’ve had.”

Heitkamp’s victory last year to fill the seat vacated by Democrat Kent Conrad was one of the biggest surprises of that election cycle, helping Democrats amass a 55-45 Senate majority.

Heitkamp’s route to the Senate is not typical for many in the body. Heitkamp, 57, hailed from a working-class family in a tiny town — her mom worked as the school cook and custodian, her father was a construction worker and a truck driver. After earning her law degree and working as an attorney, she ran in 1986 to become tax commissioner, a post vacated by Conrad who was running for Senate. After serving for six years, she later ran for state attorney general, a position she held through 2000. A dozen years later, she won her next elected office, making her the first woman elected to the Senate from her state.

In her maiden speech delivered on the Senate floor this week, Heitkamp alluded to her small-town roots and said she “never” expected to be a senator. And as a senator, she is certain to be a wild card on an array of debates, including when deficit talks pick up steam this summer. While she voted for the Democratic budget plan, she expressed reservations over elements of the Democrat proposal, saying “no” when asked if she were comfortable with it.

And while amicable to her colleagues, Heitkamp has certainly been press shy, saying the onslaught of nonstop media in the nation’s capital is “quite shocking because I like to think I’m anonymous.”

But the media glare was directly on Heitkamp in the aftermath of her guns vote, something that could become a common occurrence as she fills out her six-year term.

“I’m a big girl,” Heitkamp said when asked if she were upset by the criticism from Daley and others. “I knew very well that there were going to be people who would be disappointed. And they expressed their disappointment in various ways. That’s their prerogative, that’s their right. And so we move on.”