(BISMARCK) – A challenger in the North Dakota Senate race says she’s running to serve the people in her state.
“I think it’s really important,” Democratic United States Senate candidate Katrina Christiansen said.
She said that during her visits across the state – she has been to all 53 counties – she said the message has been the same.
“We need to do a better job working across the aisle, being future focused, being honestly bipartisan in our efforts to govern and be putting North Dakota’s, and America’s, future at the forefront of what we do,” Christiansen said. She added that the country needs to ‘get away from the fighting and the culture wars and all of the things that stop us from getting anything done.’
Christiansen said United States Senators ‘should be a champion working for us here and now, not special interest groups for our future.’
Agriculture
She said her main priority, if elected in November, is to help pass a farm bill.
“We need to fix those basis prices for our farmers and make sure that they’re presentative of the input costs and reality that we don’t have competitive grain markets for our growers right now,” she said. “That farm bill needs to reback corn, build back competitive markets, deal with the basis, and we need country of origin labeling for our ranchers.”
Christiansen said a rule that will make producers put electronic ear tags on cattle is problematic.
“Right now, we don’t have any representatives from North Dakota who are standing up for our ranchers and making sure that rule doesn’t happen,” she said. “We need to have a representative that’s really focused on getting that taken care of.”
Economy
Christiansen said a middle-class tax cut needs to happen. The Trump tax cuts are set to expire in 2025, and Christiansen said she has had a ‘hard time finding examples of policies written for middle- and working-class people.’
“It turns out the last four tax cuts were mostly for the wealthy,” she said. “We need to have someone in D.C. looking out for the middle class when it comes to tax reform.”
Christiansen also is pushing for addressing the cost of living and the cost of items.
“That means dealing with inflation. That means enforcing antitrust,” she said. “That means dealing with the fact that we don’t have a lot of competition in a lot of industries.”
Christiansen said her opponent, Senator Kevin Cramer, has been in Congress for more than 10 years and has seen the deficit increase $12 trillion.
“There’s been no real effort to address that,” she said. “When I’m talking to people, whether it’s in Pembina County or out in Golden Valley, or in Fargo, what I hear is that they want somebody to deal with the economic issues.”
Oil and gas
Christiansen said she’s in favor of all of the above energy for energy production.
She said natural gas ‘is an incredible fuel’ that burns ‘very cleanly.’
“It has a lot of energy density and it’s very easy to transport,” she said.
Christiansen added, “Oil is not going anywhere.”
She pointed to the opportunities that North Dakota’s coal industry has in the future.
“There are lots of opportunities in our coal industry to be a part of innovative things where we’re looking for those rare earth metals that are going to be a part of a broader energy portfolio that does include storage solutions,” she said.
