The NRSC's Worst Draft Pick For 2012: North Dakota Elitist Rick Berg

North Dakota sometimes seems like a hopelessly red state. Obama only won 45% of the vote against McCain. The last Democratic presidential nominee to win was LBJ. They've had a long line of Republican governors since 1992 and they have a Republican state legislature. Their only congressman is a Republican. Republican John Hoeven was elected to the Senate in 2010 with 76% of the vote. And the other Senate seat is open because Democrat Kent Conrad is retiring. But North Dakota sometimes has a surprise independent streak. Until 2010 Democrats had been elected in every congressional and Senate since 1982.

This year polls show a neck-and-neck race between an extremely well-liked and popular Democrat, former Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp and a pretty widely disliked and polarizing Republican, Rick Berg. North Dakota is home to a lot of renters-- and it just so happens that Berg, founder of Goldmark Property Management, made millions preying on tenants. His shady property management company doesn't have a Better Business Bureau Accreditation-- the BBB site and the Internet are teaming with complaints about what a den of crooks Berg's company is-- unfairly withholding security deposits from almost anyone, including college students.

Berg was elected to the state's single House seat in the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse that swept Earl Pomeroy and dozens of other Blue Dogs around the country out of office. But Heidi is no Earl Pomeroy and no Blue Dog. She's an honest-to-goodness Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Democrat. I ran into John Nichols at a Nation event a week or so ago and he told me I should look into her because, he said, she would make a really good senator. Berg, on the other hand, is likely to be as dismal a senator as he is a representative.

Earlier this year, Berg was fundraising online and sending messages in the name of Janne Myrdal, who serves as the President of the Concerned Women of America's North Dakota chapter. What the email doesn't mention is that Myrdal is a member of CWA and CWA has a history of very, very extreme positions-- including their opposition to the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act.

In fact, Berg has cozied up to CWA, which opposes VAWA by issuing crazy right-wing talking points for... people like Berg to parrot. Like this: "Most violence against women is from ‘boyfriend’ (often a succession of them) not husbands or fathers (62 percent is boyfriend violence)."

And Berg is a cosponsor of the Blunt Amendment, which would take away basic preventive care from women for almost any reason.

That's not all, of course. Berg has a history of opposing measures that would protect and help victims of domestic violence. North Dakota is one of just nine states that allow domestic violence as a pre-existing condition. But Berg rejected a bill that would have stopped insurance companies from using domestic violence as a pre-existing condition. "Rick Berg was chairman of the committee that heard the bill then. He says its supporters didn't have any examples of battered women being denied coverage.”

And when VAWA came up in Congress, Berg, needless to say, refused to lead. On March 21, 2012, a North Dakota TV station [see video below] reported that Berg’s office said he won’t take a position on reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act “until all the provisions are in place.” Then, he changed his mind after Heidi began to rally support for the issue. "Berg's position on the issue came to light after Heidi Heitkamp, his Democratic opponent in this fall's North Dakota U.S. Senate race, hosted the first of a series of roundtable discussions on domestic violence in Grand Forks on Wednesday." 

Rick Berg is Only Looking Out for Millionaires LIke Himself.

Rick Berg is listed as the 14th richest member of the U.S. House. So it's no surprise that he was recently caught on camera admitting that he didn't know the minimum wage. But he also has voted time and again to oppose raising the minimum wage -- at the same time he's voted to raise his own pay. He even opposed the concept of a minimum wage, saying, "You would say that government should control that choice rather than the employer?"

But Berg also votes like a millionaire. He opposed the Buffett rule. And he voted for Paul Ryan's budget that would give millionaires like himself another $265,000 in tax cuts.