14: A Conversation with Heidi Heitkamp

The Al Franken Podcast

Government, Progressive, Politics, Senate, Liberal, Senator, Minnesota, Franken, News, Saturday Night Live, Comedy, Snl

4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2019

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Founding Members of the Senate’s now defunct “Oh Ya! Caucus,” Former ND Sen. Heidi Heitkamp and Al discuss Heidi’s new organization, One Country. How do Democrats get more votes in rural America? 1 – show up. 2 – listen. 3 – keep coming back. 4- listen to the podcast. Heidi lost her re-elect in a state that has turned solidly red over the past ten years. Al won both of his races in a purplish-blue state by winning big in the Twin Cities and Duluth. But he did better all-around and in rural Minnesota in his second race (2014, a bad year for Dems) because he showed up, listened, and kept coming back. Turns out rural Americans care about what other Americans care about: health care; their kids’ education; keeping their kids close to them. Which means jobs.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to the Frankin podcast.
0:08.2	Heidi Hyde Camp of North Dakota is my guest today, former senator now, like me.
0:16.0	She is from North Dakota, and I'm next door in Minnesota, both states with sizable rural
0:24.4	populations.
0:26.1	Heidi has started an organization, one country, which is all about helping Democrats, in general,
0:35.6	Democratic politicians specifically, I guess, get to understand rural America.
0:43.8	And it's not that hard, really.
0:45.6	Just go there and talk to rural folks.
0:49.9	A couple of weeks ago, I think it's the beginning of the Moniz show, so you can go back and listen
0:56.9	this.
0:57.9	Something I'm really happy with.
1:00.8	I told the story about Wilmer, Minnesota, which is a rural city.
1:05.3	It's about 20,000 people.
1:06.8	It's the county seat of Kanda Yohei County, which is the largest turkey producing county in Minnesota,
1:13.9	and Minnesota is the largest turkey producing state in the country. There's a lot of turkeys.
1:20.2	And Wilmer has a huge Jenny-O turkey processing plant. And because of that, there are a lot of Hispanic Americans working
1:30.6	there and now Somali Americans. And you remember, I brought this up because Trump had done the
1:37.6	thing with Ilhan Omar, who's my congresswoman, saying, you know, basically go back, where are you from?
1:45.0	Go home.
1:46.3	And her home is Minneapolis.
1:49.6	That's my home.
1:51.1	She's my congresswoman.
	...

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