The death of ND political parties?

Are political parties, as we’ve known them, becoming a thing of the past in North Dakota? Party watchers are beginning to wonder.

There was a time when political parties in North Dakota were an important cog in the wheel of politics, elections, and governance. Those days may be waning, but the result, many fear, would be chaos. As we’ve written, several factors are contributing to some chaos currently afoot.

North Dakota’s political history is fascinating. It has ebbed and flowed since statehood, from the progressive era to today, with many twists and turns along the way. 

The former times saw prairie populism fighting “big business” — a trend which led to the state famously starting the only state-owned bank in the nation (The Bank of North Dakota), as well as a state-owned mill and elevator. Fighting the perceived “robber barons” of the early 20th century led to the formation of the Non Partisan League. After that era ended, largely due to the work of Republican President Theodore Roosevelt (who had North Dakota roots in his days as a younger adult), known as the “Trust Buster”, the NPL affiliated with the Republican Party.

Years later, as legend has it, a tiff during party conventions in Bismarck prompted NPL’ers to leave the Republican convention and move down the street to join the Democrats, which created the then-powerful Democrat-NPL Party.

North Dakotans have essentially always been fiscally and socially conservative, whatever party label they wore. They supported freedom and free enterprise, looked out for the interests of farmers and small businesses but remained suspicious of “big business”.

For many years, for North Dakotans, that meant voting for either of the major political parties — often voting for the perceived best person, rather than the party, because members of each shared those views. That led to electing mostly Democrats in statewide elective office and, for some time, in the Congressional delegation the state sent to Washington, DC, but usually electing a Republican majority in the state Legislature.

In more recent years, North Dakota’s two parties have taken interesting twists, somewhat mirroring national trends. Democrats have moved far to the left — too far for most North Dakotans’ taste, which has led to the dominance of the Republican Party in the state for decades. Now, that majority party appears fractured, with bitter divisions that appear to certainly threaten its dominance and, perhaps, its very survival.

What that means for the future of party politics in North Dakota will be interesting to see and could spell major problems for the state.