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NORTH DAKOTA PRAIRIE POLITICS

THE PRAIRIE BLOG

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BUGGED!
january 29, 2024 by jim fuglie

No wonder the North Dakota Republicans have been winning all the elections. They bugged
the Democrats’ state party headquarters. They know all the Democrats campaign secrets.
True story. (wink, wink)

First things first. This is a history story not a mystery story. At least it started out that way.
I’ll get back to the bugging in a minute.

In the late 1960s, about a dozen years after the formal merger of the North Dakota
Democratic Party and the Nonpartisan League, a group of prominent North Dakotans who
called themselves Dem-NPL’ers. set out on a project to build a permanent home for their
new party. They’d already had some political success, electing Quentin Burdick to the U.S.
Senate, William Guy to the North Dakota Governor’s office and Art Link and Rolland Redlin
to the U.S. Congress.

After incorporating as the Kennedy Memorial Foundation, they raised about $80,000
through donations and loans, and built a spectacular brick and pillar building in north
Bismarck, which they leased to the Democratic-NL Party, with a ribbon cutting in 1971,
shortly after Link left for Washington, D.C.
 The North Dakota Kennedy Center, 1902 East Divide Ave. in Bismarck, longtime home of the North
Dakota Democratic-NPL Party.

The building, long known as just The Kennedy Center, remained the state party’s
headquarters for more than five decades, and the political operatives who worked there
built a strong party, electing, over the years, leaders like Art Link, Byron Dorgan, Kent
Conrad, Wayne Sanstead, George Sinner, Lloyd Omdahl, Earl and Glenn Pomeroy, Sarah
Vogel, Roger Johnson, Nick Spaeth, Heidi Heitkamp, Bruce Hagen, Walter Christenson, Jim
Kusler, Myron Just, Ruth Meiers, Byron Knutson, Bob Hanson, Kathi Gilmore, others whose
names I have forgotten, and several Legislative majorities, with leaders like Richard
Backes, Buckshot Hoffner, Francis Barth, Rick Maixner, Bill Heigaard, Tish Kelly, Corliss
Mushik, Rollie Redlin, Merle Boucher, Tim Mathern, Joan Heckaman, Jim Maxson, and
others of those whose names I can’t remember. All of them owe their time in office to the
work of those at the Kennedy Center, led by state chairmen like Richard Ista, John Maher,
George Gaukler, David Strauss, Tom Dickson, and others whose names I can’t remember. I
apologize to all those whose names I have forgotten in those lists. I’m old, and there’s a lot I
don’t remember these days. When people ask me how old I am, I say “Seventy-ache.” I
sometimes can’t remember the exact number, so that works.

Former Governor Guy has written a fascinating history of the building, which you can read
by going here.

The glory days of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party came to an end in the early 21st
century, to a point that today the party, of which I am a member, has no elected state or
federal officials and only a handful of Legislators in the State Capitol Building.

The state of the party grew so anemic that last year the party leaders closed up shop at the
Kennedy Center and moved east, renting space in a small strip mall-like office building in
south Fargo. The Kennedy Center has sat empty for about a year now.

Over all that time, more than 50 years, the building was managed by a volunteer board of
directors, mostly Democratic-NPL luminaries, mostly aging. There was talk last year of
selling the building. With no one using the space, there was no money for maintenance,
and the volunteer board decided to just ditch it. That didn’t sit well with a lot of people who
had worked there, as employees and volunteers, and so a group of us, mostly old, bald-
headed men, but with still some energy, formed a new board, thanked the old board for all
they had done, and gathered around the conference table in the Kennedy Library portion of
the building and tried to figure out what to do.

Now, besides me, there are others on the new board who have worked in that building to
elect Democrats and and NPl’ers. including Tracy Potter, Darrell Dorgan, and Don Morrison,
all of whom worked there at some time over the years, along with former State Senator April
Fairfield, who’s now also serving as our executive director, and a few younger folks to help
get us up off our butts to get the things done to the building that have been neglected for
many years. It needs some work.

We started fixing things, like walls and windows and doors. It’s costing us what little
money was left in the bank when we took over, and we’ve begun raising funds to continue.
All the work is being supervised by our fellow board member and resident retired
handyman David Schwalbe. We’ll probably need between $25,000 and $50,000 to do what
needs to be done.

Like the original board members, we’re accepting donations to get the work done. You can
help by sending checks to April at the Kennedy Center, 1902 East Divide Ave., Bismarck, ND
58501. Checks made out to “The Kennedy Center” will be tax deductible. We’re a 501(c))(3).
We’re starting a new Honor Roll Board inside the door with names of those who give $500 or
more. Grace Link started us out with a generous check. Her name will be at the top of the
board.

We’re not going to close the building if we can’t raise the money, but there’s work that won’t
get done anytime soon if we don’t find it.

Let me tell you about something we DID find while doing some reconstructing. Tucked away
inside a door frame was a listening device. The Kennedy Center was bugged. When we took
off the door frame, there it was, all wired up for sound. There’s a picture of it below. Our
executive director showed it to someone who knows about these things. Confirmed. They
said it’s a late 1970s or 80s vintage, so it’s likely been there a while. Someone, at one time,
had the capability to listen to what was going on at North Dakota Democratic-NPL
Headquarters. No shit!
Here’s the bugging device that was tucked into a door frame in the offices at the Kennedy Center. No
one knows who put it there, or how long it had been there.

We talked about it last Saturday at our board meeting. Who might’ve done it? Mark
Andrews? Milt Young? Al Olson? Earl Strinden? Bob Wefald? Myron Atkinson? Kevin Cramer?
Richard Nixon? Donald Trump? Rudy Giuliani? All of them had reasons at one time to want
to know what was going on at our office. My desk, during some 1980’s campaigns, was
about ten feet from where the “bug” was found. Uh oh. I wonder who I talked to.

Anyway, when I started to write this, I had another purpose in mind, but got stuck down a
rabbit hole of history. While I’d like to think that one day the building could house our
party’s headquarters again, we’re finding other uses for it now. We’re renting some office
space to a couple of groups who we think can be trusted not to put in any more bugs. That’s
getting us a little rental income.

And there’s a really nice gathering space, we’ve always called the Kennedy Library, with
seating for 50 or so when it is set up theater style. We’re holding public interest gatherings
one night a month, programs with speakers to talk about things important to North Dakota
and America. We’re having one this week, tomorrow night, Tuesday, at 7 p.m.

Amy Dalrymple Molter, editor of the North Dakota Monitor will join us for a community
conversation about the state’s newest news source. Amy is an accomplished, award-
winning journalist who was most recently the editor of The Bismarck Tribune. Her latest
endeavor is as editor of the newly launched North Dakota Monitor, an independent, online,
news source reporting on state government, public policy and critical issues affecting
North Dakotans.

Tuesday’s discussion, hosted by author, historian and former State Senator Tracy Potter,
will focus on the state of investigative journalism in North Dakota, why independent
journalism is crucial to democracy, and what role the North Dakota Monitor may play in
civic engagement and discourse.

“In a time when we see newspapers shrinking and closing, it is really exciting to see
veteran journalists take on this new enterprise. I am eager to see how this new information
resource contributes to a better understanding of the issues we face, as North Dakotans,”
Potter said.

Tracy won’t talk long, but we hope Amy and maybe some of her staff will stay for an hour or
so to share their insight into the state of journalism in North Dakota and what is going on
here presently. Amy’s really good at what she does, and the Tribune was about the best its
ever been under her leadership. Not surprising. She’s a Mike Jacobs protégé, and Mike’s
trained a lot of good journalists. I was sad to see her leave the Tribune, but she’s doing
some good stuff right now.

She has a website, northdakotamonitor.com, with news of the day that is as good as any
newspaper in the state (except it doesn’t have an obituary section, which most of us old
guys turn to first every morning, to see if all our friends are still alive). And you can sign up
for her daily e-mail, just like a newspaper, only better, which comes by about breakfast
time every day, with the biggest news stories of the day.

So come and join us Tuesday night. It’s free, but if you want to help us return the North
Dakota Kennedy Center to its glory days, you can bring your checkbook.

NORTH DAKOTA MONITOR

AMY DALRYMPLE MOLTER

TUESDAY, JANUARY 30

7:00 P.M.

THE NORTH DAKOTA KENNEDY CENTER

1902 EAST DIVIDE

BISMARCK