Rep. Kevin Cramer Says He Couldn’t Say ‘No’ to Senate Race

he says everyone was telling him he needed to run

FARGO, N.D. — Congressman Kevin Cramer announced last week he will be running for Senator Heidi Heitkamp’s seat.

In January, Congressman Kevin Cramer announced he was going to seek reelection in the House.
That is, until everyone including President Donald Trump told him he needed to run for the Senate.

“It suddenly became much bigger than me, much bigger than North Dakota and that really America was worth taking this risk and going through this very difficult campaign,” Cramer said.

He says he got dozens of calls and texts from people telling him this was the next move he needed to make.
Even his wife thought it was time to make a change.

“She said ‘you know what Kevin, you can’t say no to the President multiple times, you can’t say ‘no’ to the country. I think we all have to do this,” Cramer said.

Cramer says he believes he can win the race, which would make him the second Republican senator in the state.
He says part of the reason he’s so confident is because he and Senator Heidi Heitkamp have voted on many of the same policies and they have similar personalities.
Cramer says if he does win, he will strive to make some changes.

“They can hold up a nomination just by one person’s objection. I don’t like that part of the Senate. I think that we ought to get back to a majority rule, majority vote to pass things,” Cramer said.

Some of those changes include the ones President Trump has mentioned about making schools safer across the states by placing armed guards at schools, whether it’s teachers or extra police officers.

“I mean you have to walk through a metal detector when you go to a football game, why wouldn’t you put a few more armed guards at a school? It’s having the good guys have the weapons and the good guys could be teachers. I don’t think a teacher that’s uncomfortable having a weapon should have a weapon,” Cramer said.

Cramer says he doesn’t believe the age limit on guns should be raised to 21.
However, he says it’s an issue everyone needs to work on together.

“At the end of the day, evil is not going to be stopped by a law. We have to be better in how we work with each other within a community,” Cramer said.

Republicans Tom Campbell and Kelly Armstrong, and Democrat Ben Hanson are running for Cramer’s House seat.