Associated Press Writer

By DALE WETZELBy DALE WETZEL

Gov. John Hoeven's withdrawal from a race against U.S. Sen. Kent Conrad came shortly after North Dakota Democrats were to begin airing a television ad claiming the Republican promised to serve out his second term.

"Call the governor," says the ad, produced by the state Democratic Party, which displays Hoeven's image and the main phone number of his Capitol office. "Tell him you can't give your word, then claim it doesn't matter."

Don Canton, a spokesman for Hoeven, said the Friday timing of Hoeven's announcement had nothing to do with the ad, which was to begin running on North Dakota television stations this weekend.

"This did not influence our decision," Canton said. Hoeven had wanted to disclose his intentions before September ended, Canton said. Friday was Sept. 30, the final day of the month.

David Strauss, the state Democratic chairman, was dubious. "It's more than a coincidence that (Hoeven) made his announcement (Friday)," Strauss said.

In public statements and letters to the editor, North Dakota Democrats have been arguing that Hoeven promised during the 2004 re-election campaign that he would serve out his term. Hoeven got 71 percent of the vote against Democrat Joe Satrom, a Bismarck businessman and former state senator.

Conrad, in a statement Friday responding to Hoeven's announcement, said he believed the governor would not run "because he had given his word that he would complete his four-year term when he ran for governor just last year."

The belief was based on a 2004 Hoeven television interview, an excerpt of which is shown in the ad. The interviewer, who is off camera, says: "You'll fill out your term, no matter what." Hoeven replies: "I'm running for four years, absolutely."

During his re-election campaign, Hoeven was asked a number of times if he would finish his term, or consider a race against Conrad in 2006. He did not give a yes-or-no answer, relying instead on a standard response that he was running for four years.

The ad treats Hoeven's reply as a direct response to the query, rather than as an attempt to avoid it.

Jason Stverak, director of the state Republican Party, said in a letter to the Bismarck Tribune last week that Democrats were "trying to spin a comment Gov. John Hoeven made to a reporter on one occasion into a campaign pledge."

"The only one who broke a campaign promise to the voters of North Dakota was Conrad," Stverak's letter said. "He traveled the state during his 1986 U.S. Senate campaign, promising not to run again if the federal budget was not balanced at the end of his term. It was not, but he ran anyway."

Conrad, when he first announced his Senate candidacy, promised not to seek re-election unless the nation's budget and trade deficits were under control, and interest rates lowered, at the end of his term.

In April 1992, Conrad said in a Senate speech that he would not run for another term, declaring that the federal budget deficit "was completely out of control."

However, when North Dakota's other senator, Democrat Quentin Burdick, died the following September, Conrad agreed to run for Burdick's seat, saying circumstances had changed.

The Democratic ad mentions Stverak's letter, contrasting its assertion that Hoeven made no pledge with the interview clip. "Here's the governor, in his own words," a narrator says, followed by Hoeven saying: "I'm running for four years, absolutely."

"In North Dakota, we keep our word, and the governor couldn't have been clearer," the ad says.

Strauss said the ad "speaks for itself. It's a devastating ad, because it takes (Hoeven's) own words."

Conrad is not mentioned or shown. The senator is running a separate ad, paid for by his campaign fund, which talks up Conrad's role in federal highway and energy legislation, and his work to help keep the Grand Forks Air Force Base off a list of military installations that are being closed.