October 4, 2018

A Red-State Senator Just Issued a Moving Statement On Why She’s Voting Against Kavanaugh

“Our actions right now are a poignant signal to young girls and women across our country.”

Tom Williams/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Embattled North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp announced Thursday that she will vote against the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, putting to rest weeks of speculation on how the conservative Democrat would vote amid a tight race against her Republican challenger, Rep. Kevin Cramer, an outspoken Kavanaugh supporter.

Heitkamp announced her vote in an exclusive interview with WDAY, a local news station in Fargo, North Dakota. “This isn’t a political decision. If this were a political decision for me, I certainly would be deciding this the other way,” she said. “I can’t get up in the morning and look at the life experience that I’ve had and say ‘yes’ to Judge Kavanaugh.”

The Senator elaborated on her thinking in a statement posted on Twitter, writing that in addition to her concerns about the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh she believes his testimony refuting the allegations last Thursday “called into question his current temperament, honesty, and impartiality.”

With the Senate’s final vote on Kavanaugh expected this Saturday, Heitkamp had been one of two centrist Democratic senators, along with West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, still viewed as a potential “yes” vote on the judge. Her decision puts additional pressure on undecided Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Jeff Flake of Arizona, who are also seen as potential swing votes. If all Democrats vote against Kavanaugh, including Manchin, they would still need an additional two Republicans to tank Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

But her decision might also spell doom for her own campaign. A recent survey in North Dakota, a state President Donald Trump won by a 36-point margin in 2016, showed that 60 percent of voters supported Kavanaugh and 27 percent were opposed. Meanwhile, Heitkamp’s poll numbers have been slipping—with Cramer widening his lead from 4 points to the double digits this week.

The Republican congressman had staked out a bullish position on the Kavanaugh nomination, going so far as to argue that attempted rape as a teenager might not disqualify Kavanaugh, even if the allegations were true.

“She may lose,” Heitkamp’s brother, Joel, told MSNBC on Thursday. “But in the morning, when she’s brushing her teeth, she needs to like the person she sees.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate