Democratic Senate recruit asks Obama to backpedal on Keystone pipeline

By Josh Lederman - 01/20/12 11:54 AM ET

A top Democratic recruit for the Senate is drawing a line in the sand on the Keystone XL pipeline, separating herself from President Obama in a state where the president’s favorability is underwater.

Heidi Heitkamp, North Dakota’s former attorney general and the presumed Democratic nominee to replace retiring Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), sent a letter to Obama on Friday asking him to reverse course on the pipeline, which Obama announced Wednesday that he will block.

“The Keystone pipeline would mean billions of dollars invested in our economy when we need it most, and tens of thousands of well-paid construction jobs at a time when too many Americans are out of work,” Heitkamp wrote. “It would bring new business opportunities for small businesses that would support this huge construction project, from gravel pits to Main Street diners.”

The move by Heitkamp reflected the most palpable and clear-cut attempt by a major Democratic candidate to publicly create distance from Obama since the debate over healthcare reform.

And it’s good politics in North Dakota, a major oil-producing state where opposition to the pipeline is a hard sell for Democrats. When Gallup polled the state in August, Obama’s approval rating stood at 37 percent, among the 10 states where Obama fared the worst.

Heitkamp doubled down on her criticism of Obama in a Friday conference call with reporters where she said the president’s decision was an example of all that is wrong with modern politics.

“People in Washington talk a big game about creating energy jobs, getting off our addiction to foreign oil, but when the time comes, our leaders in Washington today continue to play political games and get in partisan squabbles on getting the job done,” she said.

In another rare move for a Democrat, Heitkamp praised the man she hopes will be her partner in the delegation, Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), the popular former governor elected to the Senate in 2010.

“I know that Sen. John Hoeven has been very active on this issue. He understands the impact,” Heitkamp said. “I will work with him.”

Heitkamp and other Democratic candidates on the ballot the same year as Obama is seeking reelection pose an interesting dilemma for Democratic leaders: They know candidates must embrace the anti-Washington fervor if they are to win seats in November, but they also know there is a risk for Democratic control of the White House if they go too far in faulting Obama for the nation’s ills.

So far, they seem to have deemed the first prospect as less risky, judging by Senate Democrats’ choice of independent-minded recruits in conservative-leaning states such as North Dakota and Arizona.

Republicans, however, have no intention of letting claims by Democrats to be independent from Obama go unchallenged. The National Republican Senatorial Committee shot back at Heitkamp’s letter, arguing that issues such as the pipeline would help voters realize the importance of not sending more Democrats to Congress who would rubber stamp Obama’s policies.

“No amount of election-year political posturing from Heidi Heitkamp will cause North Dakotans to forget that she has long been a proud and loyal supporter of President Obama and his liberal agenda,” NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh said in a statement.

But asked by The Hill whether her letter presaged a long-term approach to run against Obama and Washington Democrats, Heitkamp said the question represented what was wrong with politics: The bastardization of critical policy issues into partisan dissection of what position benefits whom.

“There’s no political calculation in any of this. This pipelines needs to be built,” Heitkamp said. “It’s about doing the right thing for our state and the right thing for our country.”

— This post was updated at 11:11 a.m.