Potential Opposition to Anti-Corruption Measure Revealed

Americans for Prosperity’s North Dakota State Director Mike Fedorchak joined me on radio this morning to talk about the conservative group’s decision to not endorse Kevin Cramer “at this time.” While we visited about that decision, I asked what other election year issues they were going to be working on in North Dakota. To my surprise, Fedorchak said AFP would be looking into the anti-corruption initiated measure. His follow up led me to believe they will likely be opposing the ballot measure.

Here are a couple of audio clips from the interview. The full podcast should be up at KFGO.com soon. I will update this story when it is available for the whole conversation.

Below is Fedorchak’s response to what specifically the group was looking into and what they didn’t like about the measure. This is when the topic of out-of-state money was brought up.

There seems to be a bit of irony that Fedorchak talked about AFP taking issue with out-of-state groups trying to influence North Dakota politics. As you likely know, AFP is a Koch brothers’ group. The group’s funders were at a resort in Colorado yesterday talking about where to put their money this election cycle when the Cramer announcement was made.

Without pumping money into North Dakota’s U.S. Senate race, I’ll be curious how much of that may now be used to potentially combat the anti-corruption measure. Will opponents to the measure acknowledge those out-of-state funds the same way they seemingly despise the out-of-state funds used to support the measure? Not likely, but time will tell.

I’ve said from the introduction of this measure the question that will need to be answered is why politicians and those well-connected individuals and organizations dislike these attempts at transparency in government. If appropriate behavior abounds as is claimed, then there is nothing to worry about. At the time I also noted that I’ll be watching where the funding for this potential opposition campaign would come from. Today, we may have gotten an answer.