Meet the Next Senator from North Dakota
Sporting Saddam Hussein-style approval ratings, the next senator from North Dakota is current governor John Hoeven.
A traditional Midwestern pragmatist, Hoeven is one of many popular center-right governors who have stayed below the radar of national affairs. Together with fellow modern, less-ideological governors like Bobby Jindal and Jodi Rell, Hoeven's style is proving that quiet governance based upon prudence and responsiveness is what people are looking for -- not a revolution.
North Dakota's unemployment rate is a startlingly low 4.1 percent, the lowest in the nation. This has been assisted by Hoeven's mostly-hands-off approach to the agriculture, forestry, and game industries, as well as his maintenance of a surplus: one that was sustained enough to allow the state to enact a $400 million package slashing property and income taxes last April.
Hoeven's political philosophy checks the right boxes for the right-wing base: he is pro-life with the proper caveats (exceptions in cases of rape and to protect the mother's life), against same-sex marriage and card check, and is a strong supporter of gun rights and additional oil exploration in America. But he also favors the de-federalization of drug laws, increasing spending on education, and committing more funds to infrastructure development. Indeed, during Hoeven's tenure, the state's budget has increased dramatically, with bi-partisan support from the state legislature. But little of this has been for pet projects: whatever criticism can be lobbed Hoeven's way for enacting it, the increased spending has gone mostly toward higher education and infrastructure -- broadly-popular measures, by anyone's standard.
According to a December 2009 Rasmussen poll, Hoeven sports an 87% approval rating after a decade in office. That's not a typo. He'd have crushed even Byron Dorgan by twenty-two points, and his now-certain entry into the Senate race ensures that the center-right resurgence spearheaded by people like Meg Whitman has found another leader.