Something interesting happened on both sides of the Red River this year. Politicians decided their party’s convention wasn’t worth their time. And in both cases, it tells you something important about where those parties actually are right now.
North Dakota: The MAGA Takeover
Let’s start at home.
Every single statewide Republican incumbent in North Dakota skipped the NDGOP state convention in Minot in late March. Every. Single. One. Governor Kelly Armstrong. Secretary of State Michael Howe. Congresswoman Julie Fedorchak. All of them.
A former NDGOP state chair, Bob Harms, said it best: he’s been to every convention since 1988, and this was the first time in at least 40 years that no statewide incumbents sought the party’s endorsement. “It is absolutely unprecedented. It has never happened.”
So what happened?
The delegates voted to strip the Republican Party brand from every statewide incumbent who didn’t show up. They called them RINOs. They put up a sign at the convention calling them “missing in action.” And the vote to strip their affiliation had real support in that room.
Senator Kevin Cramer, who famously skipped the convention himself in 2012 and still won, called the vote “foolish” and said it shows organizers are part of a “shrinking tent.”
Here’s the thing. The incumbents didn’t skip because they’re lazy. They skipped because they looked at who controls that convention and made a calculation. The MAGA wing of the party has taken over the delegate process. They’re not operating in the real world of North Dakota voters. They’re operating in their own world.
And the incumbents decided, why show up and get humiliated when you can just go straight to the primary and win?
This is the civil war inside the North Dakota Republican Party. On one side, you have the established incumbents who’ve won elections, and know how to actually win statewide. On the other, you have a fired-up MAGA base that controls the convention machinery and wants ideological purity over electoral viability.
And here’s the thing. Kevin Cramer wrote the blueprint for exactly this.
He’s the one who started this. In 2012, after losing multiple races for more than a decade, Cramer finally decided to stop playing the convention game. He skipped the endorsing process entirely, went straight to the June primary, and beat Brian Kalk a well-liked, well-connected Republican who had the party’s full convention endorsement behind him.
Think about that for a second. The convention delegates picked Kalk. North Dakota Republican voters picked Cramer. Same party. Completely different results.
Cramer proved that the convention and the electorate were two different animals. And once he proved it, others followed. Doug Burgum did the same thing in 2016, going around a convention that backed Wayne Stenehjem and winning the primary in a landslide.
So when Cramer stands up now and says the convention delegates are operating with a “shrinking tent,” he’s right. But he also helped build the exit door. Every incumbent watching Cramer beat Kalk learned the lesson: the convention endorsement isn’t worth much if the voters don’t agree with the delegates.
Now the convention delegates are trying to slam that door shut by stripping incumbents of their Republican label. It won’t work. But it does tell you how much the activist base has lost faith in the officials they used to cheer for.
Neither side is going to back down. And the primary in June is going to be very telling.
Minnesota: Angie Craig and the DFL’s Own Version of This Problem
Across the river, something similar is playing out.
Congresswoman Angie Craig announced Wednesday she’s skipping the DFL state convention in Rochester this weekend and going straight to the August primary in her race for Tina Smith’s U.S. Senate seat.
Her reasoning: “The DFL endorsement process just doesn’t reflect the full scope of the party that we are.” She said 1,200 delegates shouldn’t be the ones picking the party’s candidate.
Translation: she was going to lose.
Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan had built an “insurmountable lead” with delegates, according to Flanagan’s own campaign. The activist base of the DFL, the delegates, broke hard toward Flanagan, the more progressive candidate. Craig, a centrist who’s won tough suburban races and raised $7.8 million, was the candidate party insiders thought could actually win a general election. Didn’t matter.
Sound familiar? It should.
Craig is now banking on the idea that rank-and-file DFL voters, not the convention delegates, look more like her than like Flanagan. She may be right. Mark Dayton didn’t get the DFL endorsement in 2010. He won anyway. Erin Murphy won the DFL endorsement for governor in 2018. She lost the primary to Tim Walz.
The endorsement isn’t destiny. But it matters. And Flanagan now gets that boost going into August.
And Then There’s Moorhead
Closer to home, Moorhead Mayor Shelly Carlson already learned this lesson the hard way.
Carlson ran for the open Minnesota House District 4A seat. Carlson went through the endorsing convention in Hawley. She lost. Badly. Political newcomer Erika Yoney won 153 delegate votes to Carlson’s 44.
Carlson is staying in the race and heading to the August primary. She’s following the Craig playbook: let the voters decide.
The pattern here is consistent. Moderate, established candidates, the ones with records, relationships, and real electoral track records, are getting pushed out by the activist base that controls these conventions. And they’re all making the same calculation: skip it, or lose it, and take your chances with actual voters.
What This All Means
Here’s the bottom line.
Party conventions have always been dominated by the most ideologically committed activists. That’s not new. What’s new is the degree to which the activist base has drifted from the average voter in both parties.
In North Dakota, the MAGA wing of the NDGOP is running a convention where they brand their own governor a RINO. That’s not a recipe for building a majority. It’s a recipe for a shrinking tent.
In Minnesota, the DFL convention delegates are so far left of the average voter that the most electable Democrat in the Senate race decided she couldn’t survive the process.
Both parties are dealing with the same fundamental problem: the people who show up to conventions don’t necessarily vote like the people who show up to vote in November.
The incumbents and the establishment candidates know this. That’s why they’re all making the same choice right now.
Go around the base. Take your case directly to voters.
Whether that works, we’ll find out this summer.
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