743: "I think it's complete garbage"

It's time for playoff baseball, and we had Gov. Kelly Armstrong, a notorious baseball addict on par with us hosts of the Plain Talk podcast, on this episode to make some predictions about the path to the World Series. But before we talked about that stuff, we asked Armstrong about a lawsuit announced by former lawmaker Brandon Prichard and Citizens Alliance accusing several legislative candidates who are backed by Armstrong, along with Secretary of State Michael Howe, of some hanky-panky concerning ballot petitions.

"I think it's complete garbage," Armstrong, who is not known for mincing words, said of the suit. "I think it is a group of people that can't win elections, so they don't want elections to determine who our elected representatives are."

The suit claims that amendments made by the candidates to insert missing information were illegal and disqualify those candidates from the ballot. Conveniently, those candidates are running in districts where populist Republicans are in control of the local district party that would choose their replacements.

"Elections determine who serves in North Dakota," Armstrong said, going on to allude to populist Republicans like Prichard wanting to close down primary elections so that only party insiders can choose the candidates on the ballot.

"The only benefit to this is Prichard's trying to move out of the smoke-filled back room into the courtroom," Armstrong continued. "If you can't win an election, you don't get to kick it back to a group of nine people to decide who represents you. It's anti-democratic. It's about gaining raw political power with a small group of people."

Armstrong also took questions about his support for Measure 1, which would implement a 60% vote threshold for future constitutional amendments. "I firmly believe it should be hard to change the Constitution," he said. "I think the Constitution should not be subject to the political whims of the day."

He argued that North Dakota's constitution is too susceptible to special interests who want to mandate spending in the state's most important legal document. "Constitutionally mandated spending is a very big political consultant game all over the country," Armstrong said, "and North Dakota is a cheap date in order to advertise."

When co-host Chad Oban brought up the fact that local school bonds already require 60% of the vote to pass, Armstrong said that's an argument for Measure 1, saying that it's currently easier to amend the state constitution than it is to pass a school bond. "It's harder to get school construction money passed than it is to change the North Dakota Constitution," he said. "I think that's misaligned priorities."

He added that he would sign legislation to lower the vote threshold for school bonds if lawmakers sent it to him.

Also on this episode, we discuss a nondisclosure agreement that was part of a settlement between Fargo-based Prairie St. John's hospital and the State of North Dakota. That agreement prohibited the state from announcing or releasing any information about the settlement. It's an interesting new facet of the debate over NDAs that has sprung up around data centers.

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