New oil workers key bloc in ND Senate race

MANNING, N.D. -- Shirley Meyer grew up on a ranch north of Dickinson, N.D., and has represented her rural district in the state House for a decade. But when she knocks on doors in her re-election campaign, she sometimes feels like a stranger in her own home.

"I was just shocked at how many new people there were," Meyer said during a recent campaign swing through a south Dickinson mobile home park. "I didn't see one North Dakota (license) plate."

The oil boom that has transformed North Dakota's economy and reshaped the rolling prairie landscape has also added an element of mystery to next week's election by adding thousands of potential new voters to the region's tiny electorate. And the political suspense is tied to the national question of which party controls the Senate in January.

North Dakota's contest is one of several states with Senate contests that have remained tied for months, with no signs of clarifying before Tuesday's election. A handful of them, such as Montana's Senate race one state west, may not even be resolved then.

Republicans are still looking to gain four seats they need to win the Senate majority if President Barack Obama wins reelection, three if GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney prevails.

Workers from all over the country have pouring into western North Dakota for jobs in the booming Bakken oil shale region. Dickinson, a city of 16,000 that didn't grow at all between 1990 and 2000, is now surging past 20,000 residents, with acres of new temporary housing. By one state measure, the number of oilfield workers has increased from 5,600 to 14,000 since the last presidential election. And many of the new arrivals are eligible to vote.

What that means for North Dakota politics, or individual candidates, is anyone's guess.

"I'm just hoping that I have enough ballots," said Joan Hollekim, the county auditor in Mountrail County, North Dakota's biggest oil producer. She increased her ballot printing order by 25 percent, and already has more than 600 early votes, a record.

Beth Innis, the auditor in neighboring Williams County, said she's already booked more than 2,500 absentee votes, which is double what she expected.

"I thought it would be big," Innis said of the rising number of voters. "I didn't think it would be this big."

In North Dakota, the only state that does not have voter registration, any citizen over 18 who has lived in the same place for at least 30 days can cast a ballot. That would include oilfield workers who may actually be living elsewhere and commute home to see their families.

Democrat Heidi Heitkamp and Republican Rick Berg are both pitching hard for the votes of North Dakota's energy workers. In a final campaign swing this week, Berg visited an oilfield trucking service company, a natural gas processing plant and a coal mine in western North Dakota.

Heitkamp talks up her advocacy for North Dakota's oil and coal industries when she served as state attorney general and tax commissioner. In one of her television ads, she speaks over the noise of a passing train of oil tanker cars while promising to support development of a new North Dakota refinery to process crude.

The oil industry is making sure its work force knows how to participate. A recent newsletter from the North Dakota Petroleum Council instructed workers who live in recreational vehicles or "skid shacks"- tiny huts, often no larger than a single-car garage, which can be hauled on flatbed trailers - how to request mail ballots.

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/04/3081766/new-oil-workers-key-bloc-in-nd.html

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