North Dakota Republican Party Says Delegates Deserve Better

(Photo by Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor)

(North Dakota Monitor) – The North Dakota Republican Party leadership pushed back against its own statewide incumbents promoting the party’s state convention.

All of North Dakota’s Republican statewide office holders confirmed that they will skip the NDGOP endorsement at the state convention in Minot on March 28-29.

“Unfortunately, some of our elected officials have chosen to disregard the roughly 1,000 delegates who were looking forward to hearing from them at the convention,” said Matthew Simon, chair of the North Dakota Republican Party. “The Republican voters deserve better than that.”

Two candidates seeking the party’s endorsement for statewide office met the Sunday filing deadline, U.S. House candidate Alex Balazs and Deven Styczynski, who is running for a six-year term on the Public Service Commission. That leaves several statewide races, including attorney general, agriculture commissioner and secretary of state, without candidates for Republicans to consider endorsing.