ND: Duff, Bill, and Susan meet with Conrad and Dorgan’s Staffers

Sep 11th, 2009 in Tour Blog

Bill Sammons, Susan and I finally met for the first time ever in continental breakfast room of Days Inn in Bismarck and plunged into planning for our first meeting–starting 90 minutes later. Bill was crisply organized with presentation packages for seven senators arranged in manila envelopes.

Both meetings went well, better than I had expected. Kent Conrad’s State Director and Byron Dorgan’s Deputy State Director each talked candidly about the energy and environmental challenegs they face in North Dakota. And it turns out Bill graduated from Exeter with Kent Conrad back in… (the same year I graduated from another east coast prep school). Both staffers engaged with our presentation, asked a lot of questions.

We focused quite a bit on wind power. Several large windfields line the highway between Minot and Bismarck. I outlined our KILL THE BILL strategy: (1) kill it committee; (2) kill it with a filibuster; (3) try hard not to let it come to a vote on the floor of the senate. Both promised to send us contact info for the energy advisers for the senators in D.C. Conrad’s director already has. She liked Bill’s suggestion for SOS to meet with energy advisers in D.C.

Bill left to fly to Indiana. Susan and I took to the bus to Minot. The man behind Susan asked her to hold his goldfish bowl (full of fish) while he got situated. She did. The man next to him told Susan about his mother working in an ND factory making wind turbine blades. Energy stories everywhere.

A mad, mad dash to make the train in Bismarck. We just did. We were the last two aboard. Whew!

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