New Dalrymple Campaign Ad Could Be Titled “We Didn’t Screw It Up”

Governor Jack Dalrymple’s campaign has a new ad out called “Economic Success.”

One area where I’ve been pretty critical of North Dakota Republicans is in their taking credit for the state’s oil boom. Sometimes, from the way they talk about the “North Dakota way” and the “North Dakota model,” you’d think they had invented oil. Obviously that’s not true. The state isn’t prosperous because of any set of public policies. The state is prosperous because we happen to have an oil boom (combined with some very good years in agriculture), and the politicians have been smart enough not to tax and regulate it out of existence.

That’s the tone Dalrymple’s ad strikes, calling the governor a “good steward” of the state’s economy. The ad is careful not to cast Dalrymple or his policies as the motivating factor behind the economy, but rather as the guy who didn’t screw things up.

We can debate about whether or not the long-term spending path Dalrymple and the state’s majority Republicans have put us on is sustainable, but at this moment in time this ad’s message is going to contrast nicely for conservative North Dakotans against a backdrop of Democrat challenger Ryan Taylor’s platform of aggressive spending and policy making.

Taylor is trying to campaign as a reformer at a time when most North Dakotans like things just the way they are.