Sep 25, 2004 - 23:20:02 CDT
Bismarck Tribune(In late July, the Tribune profiled Mandan attorney Mike Liffrig, a Republican who is running for the U.S. Senate. Today, we profile the Democratic incumbent, Sen. Byron Dorgan. To read the Liffrig story, click on Dakotabuzz .)
Byron Dorgan checks out the continental breakfast in a quiet Fargo hotel lobby. It's 7:10 on a Saturday morning, and he whistles as he gets coffee and decides on a waffle. The do-it-yourself waffle machine is baffling him, so a hotel worker shows him how to operate the newfangled thing.
She hovers nearby as the creamy batter browns -- as if she suspects this guy is going to need some supervision. When a buzzer goes off, the man in the suit looks at her feebly, and she helps him flip it over.
The man sits down at a table. He's fueling up for a 15-hour day crisscrossing southeastern North Dakota, with his waffle on a paper plate.
He opens the morning newspaper to the editorial page, and reads the letters to the editor.
"Christians who vote Democrat are hypocrites," Tena Bengtson, of Fargo, declares in her letter. The Democratic platform is anti-God, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual marriage, pro-segregation and against public prayer, abstinence education and the teaching of the Bible in schools, she says. Then she takes aim at Dorgan, accusing him of voting for "a woman's choice to kill," "racist" affirmative action and funding of arts that "blaspheme God."
Dorgan reads the last line of the letter out loud, "If you are a Christian and you vote for Dorgan, you are no friend of God."
He closes the paper and resumes eating.
"It's more amusing than anything," he says. The author of the letter is "someone who's part of the corrosive, ugly politics of destruction." He says he's not interested in people who are "tearing things down."
"They don't matter much in the end," he says.
Dorgan has been in the public eye since he was named state tax commissioner at age 26, so he's used to getting ripped in the editorial pages every now and then. He's now the opposite of 26, at age 62. Branches of wrinkles now frame his eyes and grasp toward his ears.
He's finishing his second term in the U.S. Senate, and today he's working toward a third, with meetings, speeches and appearances from a Colfax cafe to a threshing show that attracts a colony of Hutterites.
When he's not working 12- to 16-hour days in Washington, D.C., Dorgan returns to North Dakota for days like this about 30 times a year. But he's not dreading the 14 hours in a rented maroon Envoy.
"I look forward to the day," he says. "This'll be fun."
Angry letters notwithstanding.
Tuna noodle hotdish
But before the "fun" begins, Dorgan wants to make a quick unscheduled stop south of Fargo in Colfax, where Becky Williams wowed him with her noon special, fried chicken, a couple of months ago. She made it just the way Dorgan's mom used to: Fried and then baked.
"I got the last special," he says proudly. He enjoyed it so much that he sent Williams a "thank you" note. Now he's convinced that if they stop at the tiny cafe this morning, they'll find a fresh batch of caramel rolls.
It's the first of many times today that he'll mention his mother's fabulous cooking. He seems to crave it, perhaps because his mother can no longer provide it. She was killed in 1986 by a drunken driver who was trying to outrun the police at the intersection of Avenue C and Fifth Street in Bismarck.
She was 70 years old, but that didn't make it any easier. She would've lived to a ripe old age, Dorgan says. Her own mother lived to 94 and her sisters died in their late 80s. His mother and father are buried in his hometown of Regent, in southwest North Dakota.
Byron's brother, Darrell Dorgan, a longtime newsman who is now executive director of the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame, was the first reporter on the scene of the accident, not knowing the victim was his mother. It was a "terrible shock" to lose the woman who had kept the family together, and who was caring for their father, who had severe dementia.
In his note to Williams, Dorgan suggested she consider adding tuna noodle hotdish -- another one of his mom's specialties -- to the menu. He often makes the casserole for his family, and has convinced the Capitol kitchen staff to occasionally serve the dish during the monthly Democratic Senate caucus meeting in the Senate Dining Room.
"I've got all the senators eating tuna noodle hotdish," Dorgan says, obviously pleased with himself.
But when they stop at the cafe at about 8 a.m., there are no caramel rolls. Dorgan's "thank you" note is framed and hanging on the wall. He settles for a chocolate chip cookie and a Coke.
On the campaign trail
Dorgan's driver is his state director, Bob Valeu, who's been working in North Dakota politics since 1966, and with Dorgan since 1992.
Even though he's been behind the wheel driving Dorgan around many times, Valeu says Dorgan still knows the roads better than he does.
As they drive through golden soybean and sunflower fields, the scenery seems to bring Dorgan back to his upbringing on the outskirts of Regent, where his father ran the Farmers Union Oil and they raised horses, cattle and chickens.
Soon he's off talking about how letters with less than specific addresses still get delivered in North Dakota. Les Snavely of Bowman once received a letter that was addressed to "the man in southwest North Dakota who collects motorcycles." And a grandfather in Glenburn received a letter that was addressed to "Grandpa" in Glenburn, N.D. The postmaster figured it out, based on the Silver Spring, Md., postmark.
The VFW is surrounded by pickups at Dorgan's first scheduled stop in McLeod, a town of about 80. Concerns about leafy spurge control and grazing rights fill the room's gray metal chairs with about 40 folks in cowboy hats, trucker caps, Levi jeans, flannel shirts and cowboy boots. About 5,000 cattle graze on the nearby 77,000-acre Sheyenne Valley National Grasslands.
"When they call the ranchers, they come," explains Joel Heitkamp, a Democratic state senator who represents the area.
Dorgan asks about the harvest and commiserates with the cattle ranchers as they explain their beefs with the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the grasslands.
Dorgan wrote $200,000 into the Forest Service budget to combat leafy spurge in the grasslands, but the agency used it for other purposes. So he had a leafy spurge plant shipped to Capitol Hill and plopped it on the dais during a committee hearing to illustrate his point.
"My understanding is that it's (herbicide) going on the ground out here (now)," Dorgan queries the ranchers, who nod in agreement. Dorgan vows to stand up to the Forest Service if they try to reduce the amount of grazing allowed in the grasslands, saying if they do, "We're gonna have a hell of a fight, and I'll be in the middle of it."
He also plugs his work on other fronts: forcing a vote on his bill that would allow Americans access to cheaper Canadian prescription drugs, his fight to get prairie dogs off the endangered species list, his support of cattle producers during the mad cow scare, and country-of-origin labeling.
He sprinkles his speeches with down-home anecdotes about shooting prairie dogs or getting angry calls, like the time he got a call from a North Dakota man who told him, "If you don't fix this, I'll come out there and fix you." When Dorgan asked if the man was threatening him, rather than backing down, the man replied, "Hell yes. I thought I made that clear."
Dorgan and the crowd get a chuckle out of that, and then Dorgan thanks the people for coming, joking that they "could've slept 'til noon" instead. That gets a laugh, and prompts someone to joke "maybe in Lisbon." Which is where Dorgan's headed next.
On the public stage
Before the average person could gather their things up and open the car door, Dorgan is out of the SUV, up the steps and disappearing into the Lisbon gymnasium.
His press secretary states the obvious: He's a fast walker.
Dorgan is scheduled to speak at another homecoming ceremony for a unit of National Guard soldiers. Dorgan is right on time, but the military band has to play a few extra songs because the governor hasn't arrived yet; his airplane is bucking a stiff wind.
Gov. John Hoeven arrives a few minutes late, and the ceremony begins.
Dorgan's press secretary, Rebecca Pollard, watches from the bleachers. Unlike most U.S. senators' press secretaries, she has not written the words Dorgan will deliver today.
"Nobody writes speeches for him," she says, "which makes my job easier."
He just jots down a few notes and does it himself. This is about the fourth welcome home ceremony Dorgan has done, and Hoeven also has spoken at several of the cermonies. While Hoeven's speech sounds a lot like the one he delivered at other ceremonies, Dorgan tends to mix it up more, adding and subtracting anecdotes here and there and delivering lines like, "The breath of freedom has always been paid for by sacrifice."
He tells a story about how he was asked to deliver medals of honor to a World War II veteran who was dying of lung cancer. He is applauded when he says if the National Guard is going to be interchanged with the Army, then National Guard members are entitled to the same retirement and health care coverage as regular Army members.
After the ceremony, a cluster of Guardsmen are asked what they thought of the ceremony, and one angrily says "Vote the Bush out." An electrician from Grand Forks says if he planned a job as poorly as President Bush planned the war, he'd be out of a job soon. When the man spots Dorgan nearby, he hustles over to shake his hand and thank him for his "good work."
Dorgan's opponent, Mike Liffrig of Mandan, has tried to make a campaign issue out of Dorgan's interview in the Michael Moore film "Fahrenheit 9/11." Liffrig says Dorgan should not have agreed to be in the film, and demanded an apology because he says the film demoralizes American troops and emboldens terrorists.
Dorgan says he has never heard one negative comment from those soldiers, who have a right to know the answers to the questions he asked in the movie. When asked whether he would vote to go into Iraq knowing what he knows now, Dorgan says we can't revisit the votes, "But we should make sure that neither the president nor the Congress will ever again be given wildly inaccurate intelligence on which to make these decisions."
Popular at Pizza Ranch
Usually during days like this, Dorgan eats on the run, but the Lisbon ceremony ended earlier than expected, so he has a half hour to kill.
He and his two staffers grab a bite to eat at the Pizza Ranch. Dorgan complains that he's "constantly hungry," perhaps because he's constantly moving. He's amused by a guy wearing a T-shirt that says "Butt Naked" on the back. He wanders over to talk to the man, who suddenly looks as if he's having second thoughts about his choice in attire.
Dorgan does a lot of gladhanding, and most of the people seem to know who he is. Valeu says people used to just recognize him as someone important, but not be entirely sure who he was. Now they usually recognize him and know who he is. Often, they want to shake his hand or take a photo with him.
When Dorgan resumes eating pizza, a Pizza Ranch employee approaches and asks if Dorgan would have his picture taken with the employees. "Sure," he says. He poses for pictures with a group of employees, an employee who missed the photo session, individual employees, and the son of an employee.
Most likely, the photograph will be framed and hanging on the wall next time Dorgan stops by.
On the farm
Fewer people are interested in meeting Dorgan at the Wiltse farm, about five miles outside of Lisbon.
It's a perfect scene for a photo opportunity, with wooden seats propped up by hay bales in the shadow of farm buildings.
There's room for a few dozen farmers, but only five people show up, even though the meeting was well advertised. The temperature is approaching the 80s, though -- people may have better things to do.
Dorgan asks two farmers about their crops, and explains how he helped get $200 million tucked into the hurricane disaster bill for North Dakota farmers who have suffered crop losses due to everything from drought to flooding.
The conversation turns when an elderly couple begin telling Dorgan how they drive 260 miles to Canada every three months to buy prescription drugs for half price. They often run into other North Dakotans doing the same thing.
Les and Arlene Gibson tell Dorgan they spend about $3,000 per year on drugs -- including Les's chemotherapy pills.
This gives Dorgan an opening to talk about his longtime push for a "reimportation" bill that would allow Americans to buy the prescription drugs from foreign countries. He has proposed a two-year "Prairie Prescriptions Pilot Project" that would allow North Dakota pharmacists and distributors to buy prescriptions in Canada, and ensure the drugs are safe.
Arlene Gibson, 80, says modern medicine is keeping people like her and her 87-year-old husband alive longer, but they have to be able to afford the medicine.
"Miracle drugs don't offer anybody any miracles unless you can afford to take them," Dorgan likes to say.
Threshing show
After an Oakes National Guard homecoming ceremony, similar to the morning ceremony in Lisbon, Dorgan heads to a threshing show in Fullerton. He recalls being asked to speak at the Fullerton High School graduation in the 1970s, when he was state tax commissioner. And although he couldn't say yes to every invitation, he accepted the invitation because he could identify with Fullerton's class of 10; he graduated in a class of nine.
When he spots kids riding horses in the ditch, he waxes nostalgic again. He says his dad always had about 20 horses, although his mother always thought they only had 10. He still has his father's saddle.
He disappears into Quonsets containing a model train show, quilt raffle, and lunch accompanied by live polka music. As it turns out, that Fullerton graduating class that he spoke to is at the threshing bee for a 30-year reunion, and they ask him to pose for photos with them.
Most people greet him warmly, but one elderly man shakes his head in disgust and scuttles away when he realizes Dorgan is in the room. He talks to several Hutterites, who aren't sure who he is. There are several nearby colonies of Hutterites, a religious group that lives communally.
During the pie auction to benefit Fullerton, the auctioneer hounds Dorgan until he buys a pie for $50 -- which is a better deal than the $265 price paid by the Fullerton grain elevator.
Back in the SUV, Dorgan is thinking about the apple pie he just bought.
"Nobody makes pie like my Mom," he says.
Talking politics
While on the road, Dorgan ruminates on North Dakota politics.
He says it's not about trying to figure out who the worst candidate is, but who the best candidate is. He thinks negative campaigns backfire in North Dakota, a place where much of the economy depends on "planting a seed of hope" in the ground.
"They want politics to be positive and offer some hope," he says.
He says politics are "intensely personal" here and people like to see, hear and touch the candidates. Even if they're meeting Dorgan for the first time, people feel like they know him, he says. He thinks voters ask themselves "Do they know you? Do they trust you? Do they think you've done a good job?"
Republicans long have been perplexed by North Dakotans' propensity to elect Republicans for every office but Congress, and Dorgan's take on that is that North Dakotans aren't particularly partisan. They vote for the person. He said it's a well-known fact that about 38 percent of North Dakota voters are Republican, 32 percent are Democrat, and the rest are independent.
He says experience is considered a valuable asset in every endeavor except public office.
"My experience is not a liability," he says. "It's an enormous asset for our state."
His brochure brags that North Dakota gets $2.07 back for every dollar it sends to Washington -- "the second best return in the nation!"
Dorgan's campaign literature calls him "one of America's most talented and influential policymakers" and "the first North Dakotan to hold a senior leadership position in the United States Senate." His brochure names his key committee assignments, but does not mention his position as chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee -- where his Republican opponent, Mike Liffrig, claims his primary purpose is to make sure Democrats get elected and obstruct the Republican agenda.
Dorgan says he wasn't sent to Congress to implement either a Republican or Democrat agenda.
"They send us there to do what's right," he says. "Both parties can be right and both parties have been wrong. I won't be a rubber stamp for either party's agenda."
He notes that he was the first chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee to invite the president to meet with them "in an effort to find common ground."
Liffrig is trying to convince North Dakotans that Dorgan was a good conservative Democrat when he was first sent to Congress, but he's changed over the years to a more liberal version of his former self on abortion and gun issues. Dorgan says he has changed over the years, but not in the way Liffrig describes.
He says he's still tight-fisted, supports the Second Amendment and works on "pro-life" issues such as medical research and access to prescription drugs. He cites a National Journal story that ranked him among the top 10 most conservative Democratic senators (near the bottom of the list).
"That's about right," Dorgan says. "Mr. Liffrig is far off on the extreme right wing fringe of the Republican party and that's why he has trouble seeing the middle."
He counts Republican senators Trent Lott and John McCain among his friends. McCain told the Tribune they are "very good friends" and that Dorgan is "congenial and very amusing sometimes."
"But his wife is the brains of the outfit," he joked. "She's a lot smarter than he is -- a lot smarter than I am, too."
They both sit on the Commerce Committee, and McCain said he and Dorgan have worked together on many issues that require bipartisanship, such as telecommunications and media consolidation.
"He's never been partisan with me," he said. "My work with him has been productive and bipartisan."
Liffrig claims Dorgan has become more liberal over the years, but when asked if Dorgan is perceived as a liberal on Capitol Hill, McCain said, "I don't know anything about that. I'll let others make that judgment."
The day ends
After a Democratic fund-raiser, Dorgan's rented SUV is finally headed back to Fargo, 13 hours after it left. It's 8:30 p.m., and he still has a dinner meeting to attend.
As darkness descends around the SUV, Dorgan on his laptop computer, works with his BlackBerry handheld computer, and calls home on his cell phone. He laughs when the person on the other line asks him to pick up something at a store before he flies home to Virginia the next day, and he protests that he may not have time.
It was his teen-age daughter, Haley.
What was it she asked him to pick up at a Fargo grocery store? Lefse.
(Reach Deena Winter at 250-8251 or deena.winter@bismarcktribune.com.)
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