- [Announcer] Funding for Election 2024 coverage is provided in part by AARP, a nonprofit nonpartisan membership association, 83,000 strong in North Dakota.

Find information on how to make your voice heard in the 2024 election at aarp.org/ndvotes, and by the members of Prairie Public.

(calming music) - Hello, I'm Dave Thompson and welcome to Prairie Public and AARP North Dakota's coverage of Election 2024.

Tonight, the debate for North Dakota's (indistinct) US House Seat.

My guests are Republican nominee, Julie Fedorchak, and Democratic nominee Trygve Hammer.

Each candidate will be afforded a one minute opening, and a one minute closing statement.

In between, they'll debate and respond to topics and questions that have been chosen by myself and Prairie Public's Madeline, as well as our AARP partners.

Based on a coin flip, Trygve Hammer will go first on opening statements.

- Thank you Dave and everyone here at Prairie Public for hosting this event.

Thanks also to you, Julie, for joining me in this conversation, and to you, North Dakotans watching us from home.

I'm Trygve Hammer, I grew up in Velva.

I'm a North Dakota native, a Navy and Marine Corps veteran, and a graduate of the US Naval Academy.

I have studied, taught, and exercised leadership all over the world, including a combat tour in Iraq.

Since I returned to North Dakota, I've been a high school science teacher, a rig hand on work over rigs out in the Bakken, and a freight rail conductor.

I've also been a caregiver for my father, and I myself am the father of three outstanding children.

I have been campaigning around the state and hearing your stories.

I have shared in your struggles.

I am ready to take my lifetime of leadership experience and that boots on the ground perspective to Congress.

US House of Representatives hasn't gotten anything done for far too long now.

I wanna put it to work for you.

- Thank you.

And now let's hear from Julie Fedorchak.

- Good evening, North Dakotans, thanks for tuning in.

I'm Julie Fedorchak, and I'm the youngest of eight children of Duane and Doris Liffrig.

My parents were born dirt poor in the Dust Bowl of Western North Dakota during the Great Depression.

Their tough childhood, taught them many things, including the need for resourcefulness, independence, and having a high tolerance for hard work.

They passed those traits along to all of us, and these are the things I wanna bring to bear in Washington for all North Dakotans.

I have 30 years of experience in business and public service.

As your public service commissioner, I have worked hard to deliver results, like lowering utility rates by $50 million over the requests, like pushing back on the Biden and Harris administration's, efforts to shut down coal oil and natural gas, and permitting $15 billion worth of new energy infrastructure.

I look forward to the conversation tonight and to explain how I want to bring additional results to work for you in Washington.

Thank you, AARP and Prairie Public for hosting this event.

- And thank you both very much.

Let's begin tonight with the recent ruling by the North Dakota Judge, that North Dakota's six week abortion ban should be vacated and ruled unconstitutional.

I know you probably both share different views on this and voters wanna hear them.

So tell me your reaction to this, and also what state or federal guidelines would you both favor regarding this controversial issue?

Julie Fedorchak first.

- Thank you, Dave.

I have been very clear during this entire seven month election that I am pro-life, and I believe, and I support the state's laws that have been passed, and I believe that they will be found to stand, and I hope that they are.

I support the Dobbs' decision that turned this issue back to the states to determine what's best for each state.

I think that that is how the framers of our constitution planned our nation.

We are a federalist nation and we have established this process whereby tough issues, we can all live together in one nation by allowing states to have their say on the tough issues like this, so I do support giving the states a right and I do support our current position in abortion as it stands in North Dakota, I'm sorry.

And as it relates to what I would support, I think what we all need to do is work on a culture of life.

I have friends and people from my whole 30 plus years of experience that are on all sides of this issue, but no one that I know thinks that we should have more abortions.

So I think that we should all be working towards a common ground of having fewer abortions and helping to support a culture of life.

That's something we can all agree on, and I think we can make real progress working on that to support adoptions, and make it easier for adoptions, and to help women who are in troubled pregnancies to choose life.

That's the work that I wanna get work on and get excited about, and I think we can make a lot of progress together focusing on that.

- Trygve Hammer.

- I agree that nobody wants more abortions, and I believe North Dakotans respect each other's deeply held beliefs, including those about when life begins.

But a recent survey showed, and voters have proven that North Dakotans reject these bans.

They're more worried about government overreach into our personal freedoms and what could come after this.

In states where we've seen these bans, we have not seen that culture of life.

We have seen more a culture of cruelty, a culture of control.

We've seen women turned away from emergency rooms because doctors are afraid of losing their licenses or losing their freedom for practicing the skills that they have learned.

And where will it end?

We don't know.

We've seen birth control under threat, we've seen IVF under threat.

One in six North Dakotans deal with infertility issues.

There are thousands of couples in North Dakota who will need IVF, or similar technologies in order to get pregnant.

And also the rhetoric around this issue is both false and damaging.

Such rhetoric as post birth abortion, a thing that does not exist and never has existed in any state in the United States, but that Julie brought up during her primary debate.

We need to reject that, and we need to accept personal freedom for everyone and know that that doctor and the person in that doctor's office are the people who best know the situation and our best place to make a decision.

- Julie Fedorchak, will you like to respond?

- For sure, yeah, thank you.

You know, I think that there's a lot of flame to go around on both sides as my opponent just used a lot of scare tactics and threats about what could or might happen.

I believe that we all should focus on working together to reduce the number of abortions, and we should move in America to be more like the rest of the western world where abortion isn't accepted beyond 16 weeks, that's four months where we can work with women to help them decide what's right for them.

I think that that's a good standard.

I think that we can all get, and should all get behind moving in that direction.

Scare tactics and extreme positions, I think the truth of the matter is there was 210 Democrats who voted against a bill that would have required doctors to help a baby, provide service to a baby, who was born alive in a botched abortion.

Now that's an extreme position.

I don't, you know, is that the norm?

Probably not.

But again, I think we can do better.

We can do better in this country.

We can work towards minimizing, eliminating the need for abortions, supporting women in tough circumstances, and helping them choose life.

That works for everyone, especially for the baby whose life is at the crossroads of this decision.

- Trygve, one last bite of the apple.

- Where we've seen these bans happen, those bans are what has been extreme.

I have talked to people here in North Dakota who've had maybe multiple miscarriages, and then a baby they thought was going to come to term that turned out to be dead.

So they needed to get that problem taken care of.

Now they still wanna have a child, but they are scared to do that in this state.

And there are surely more women here who are in that same position.

- Thank you both very much.

Let's go now to inflation.

One of the key issues in this presidential race and in the country as a whole, some argue that excessive government spending has led to inflation problems, yet North Dakota has been a key beneficiary of some government spending.

How do you reconcile these two issues and how, as a member of Congress would each of you work to get inflation under control?

Trygve Hammer, your shot.

- Alright, well, getting inflation under control is what the Fed is doing by raising interest rates, but that is not always the most effective way.

If really if we had as much competition as we are supposed to have in the market, the prices would not have gone up as much.

And what caused inflation was basic supply and demand.

Demand went up in the wake of COVID-19 and supply chains were not able to keep up.

Now we've been dealing with that like every other nation, and actually we have got it under control faster than anyone else.

It's still not good enough.

People are out there, they're burdened by these high prices and especially those on the lower end of the economic spectrum paying for their groceries and other items.

So we need to get it under control and we need a long-term solution that encourages more competition and gets away from the monopoly that we've seen growing and growing in the United States.

- Julie Fedorchak?

- Sure, so, it's ironic that we've seen such record inflation because the Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which was supposed to do the opposite, reduce inflation.

And that $1 trillion bill has done nothing but raise inflation.

We can't spend our way out of this mess, and I don't like the proposals that are coming out of, and have come out of the Biden-Harris administration on this issue.

I have been a kind of a broken record on this campaign.

I have three things that I like to talk about in this campaign, and it's energy, energy, energy.

Energy is at the heart of helping us drive down inflation.

We should be changing our energy policies and digging into being American energy independent.

We can do that, North Dakota can help lead that, and there's a lot of ways we can help grow the economy through energy production, reduce inflation through driving energy costs down.

We can help create more revenue for the federal government by allowing more drilling and production on federal lands, which will also help with the debt, and the deficit, and the spending.

So there's so many opportunities with the energy industry alone to help us drive down inflation, help lower the cost for citizens, help reduce the costs of groceries, gas, everything else.

And we really need to be doubling down on simple things like practical, actual things like that that can help make a difference here.

- Okay, Trygve, your response.

- Inflation has dropped from 9% on an annual basis to less than 3% on an annual basis since the Inflation Reduction Act.

Do I know that that's what caused that reduction?

No, I don't, but those are the numbers, those are the real numbers.

I worked out on the oil rigs in the Bakken.

My wife came to North Dakota because of the oil industry.

No one is more pro-American energy than me.

And I agree, and we need an all of the above approach to energy here in the United States.

So we achieve that energy and independence that everyone wants, that we get those cheaper rates and reliable energy and that we all have clean air and water.

- Julie, one more shot.

- Sure, I just say that the spending that has been at the mainstay of the Biden-Harris administration, the growth of government, the growth of the EPA alone, EPA has added, there's 18,000 employees at the EPA.

They've added 85,000 new IRS agents to go after hardworking North Dakotans and others throughout the country.

Meanwhile, when you've got a problem at the border, our sheriffs are saying, or they call someone from border patrol because they have some immigrants that they can't help or help do anything with, and they call border patrol and border patrol says, sorry, we don't have the resources to help you.

So it's just a terrible lack of leadership this administration has had.

They don't have the ideas to get this right and they don't quite honestly trust the American system to do what it does best, which is grow jobs, provide opportunities, and improve the environment for everyone in this country.

- Okay, let's now turn to farming and the farm bill, and the farm economy.

How do each of you stand on continuing farm subsidies, and how crucial is farming in the state of North Dakota?

Also, what do each of you wanna see in the next farm bill?

We start with Julie Fedorchak.

- This morning I spent in a beet field just outside of Fargo on harvest and had a lot of great conversations with farmers, and this is one of the things I like the most about campaigning and serving in North Dakota.

One thing that's probably more important even than energy development is food production.

We have got to have food security in our country, and a good farm bill is one of the most important things to get to that end.

And so things that I support in the farm bill, I think we need to improve the crop insurance, we need to raise reference prices, we need to focus on trade, helping to support new markets, new market development, and we need to support research and development.

What I don't support is creating more and hamstringing our producers more with more environmental regulations by the EPA and their efforts to shut down access to different herbicides, different fertilizers, and just generally make things harder and tougher for our producers who are responsible for helping us maintain our food supply and our food security in this country.

- Trygve Hammer your response.

- You know, I recently talked to a young man who wants to get into farming and the major barrier for him is getting the dirt to plant his seed in, to get access to land because prices have gone up so much.

And we really need something in the next farm bill to help those beginning farmers.

We need to do more than raise reference prices.

We need to make changes so that the bill is keeping up with new technologies, with new markets.

And we need to also guard our protective programs for producers here in North Dakota.

One thing we need, we need mandatory country origin labeling for our beef and other products.

When I go into the grocery store, or you do, you should be able to go to the counter and know where your beef came from.

- [Dave] Would you like, Oh, were you finished?

- No, I wasn't.

(laughing) - [Dave] Go ahead please.

- And the other thing that the farm bill needs to do is it really needs to reintroduce competition into the market by helping new meat packers get into business, and new Ag product businesses get on their feet so they can compete against these near monopolies.

- Okay, Julie, would you like another shot?

- I would actually, so the current farm bill, the house has passed the version of the farm bill.

It got moved out of committee in a bipartisan way and it's a strong bill and there's efforts to make sure that that gets through in the lame duck session, and I fully support those efforts, it's really important.

We've already kicked the can down the road on this issue for a whole year, so it's really important.

Farmers are facing record high debt $540 billion worth of debt, a record high for our farmers today, while the prices are going down, and their input costs are rising including their energy costs because of the terrible policies that the Biden administration on energy.

And so we can do better, we must do better.

Unfortunately, the Senate right now, is being held up in the Senate.

Debbie Stabenow, the chairman of the Ag Committee, and she is fighting for more food programs, for nutrition programs.

I don't object to those programs, but she's doubling the money for those programs, meanwhile, resisting efforts to increase the support for farmers.

We have to have a lot of farm in the farm bill and make sure that we're working through those issues and getting this done this year and getting it right for our producers - Trygve Hammer.

- We need to make sure that the farm bill focuses on family farms, and growing family farms.

They are the backbone of North Dakota's economy, and farming is the most enduring industry we have in our state.

We have to do everything to protect it and we need a house of representatives that can actually get things done so we get a farm bill that has real meaning and is targeted where it should be.

- Okay, our next subject, immigration with controversy surrounding immigration in rural communities such as Springfield, Ohio, how do you address the concerns over xenophobia along with the need for workers with the concerns of strained resources for communities caused by immigration?

Let's start with Trygve.

- First of all, we need to lower the rhetoric everywhere on this issue.

It's very unhelpful and people are actually going to get hurt.

We had a chance to fix immigration.

We had a chance to secure the border in this Congress, but it was rejected because there were politicians who would rather campaign on an issue than fix the problem.

The border problem is solvable.

I have worked on borders around the world.

I have held many perimeters in different places in the Marine Corps, and perimeter security, border security is not that hard to do, but you need eyes on the objective, you need more personnel, which were in that bill.

And one problem we're seeing coming up from Mexico as well is fentanyl.

And if we had had those fentanyl detectors, we have the technology, but we didn't get it to the border because they rejected that bill.

So we have more fentanyl flowing in, where it normally flows in 90% of it through our border crossings in automobiles.

- Julie Fedorchak.

- This is crisis of neglect.

And what we don't need ideas for how to fix the border solutions or the border crisis, we need leadership.

And for three years, the Biden-Harris administration completely ignored this.

They got into office, signed an executive order opening the borders, and had walked away.

Our border tsar has not even been to the border.

That is just a complete utter lack of leadership, and it has created a massive crisis throughout our country.

And yes, people are mad, people are upset.

Their communities are changing.

There's terrorists, and terrorist watch lists that have gotten through the borders, you can walk right in.

8 million, 10 million people have just walked into our country and people don't feel safe.

So absolutely the first thing needs to happen is we have to close the borders.

You can't have any sensible immigration, legal immigration if the borders aren't secured.

So we have to do that.

And then we have to work from there to get on top of a smart immigration policy that helps bring in the workers that we need.

I know that North Dakota businesses are desperate for workers.

I've talked to them about, and there's a lot of great ideas for how to improve the immigration, but absolutely number one, you have to secure the border.

- Trygve, your response.

- You know, many times in the Marine Corps I took the oath of office, and I swore allegiance in that oath of office to the Constitution of the United States of America.

Not to a person, not to a party.

We have a US House of representatives full of people, who have forgotten who they work for, and forgotten to what they have sworn their oath.

They had a chance to fix our border security problems, they had a chance to fix our immigration system, but they did not because they had to favor a person and a party over the American people.

- Julie Fedorchak, your last word.

- Three years went by, this administration did absolutely nothing.

I think that border bill has a great template for a bill moving forward, and I look forward to working on those issues.

On behalf of the citizens who I know are very, very concerned about this.

This is the number one issue I hear from North Dakotans when I'm traveling around the state, is what is going on in our border.

It does not feel like America when we allow people to just come right in.

And the people who are most concerned and most mad about it are the new Americans.

The people who did it right, who went through the process, who did the work and who became a citizen, the legal way.

We have to get this right, it's just not appropriate.

I mean the Democrats, they have a solution for government for so many things, but on the one thing that the government absolutely has to do is responsible for doing, protecting our borders, they took a pass.

It's just absolutely inexcusable and I really hope that Americans recognize that dereliction of duties that it has occurred on this issue alone and vote for a change in November and vote for President Trump.

- Our next question comes from our co-sponsors, AARP, North Dakota.

Julie Fedorchak gets the first shot at.

Social Security Trust Fund is expected to see a shortfall in 10 years.

If congress does not act, millions of Americans who are counting on Social Security will see cuts to the money they've earned.

Do you see a path for Congress to work on a bipartisan solution to protect Social Security for those who have earned it?

- Absolutely, I do see a path for this, and it's something that I would be very serious about working on.

140,000 North Dakotans receive Social Security and more than half of them depend on it for half of their income.

It's a really important issue.

And the thing that we have to keep in mind when we talk about Social Security is it's our money.

Like I started working when I was 14, I started paying into Social Security that isn't the government's money, that's my money, that's Trygve's money, that's Dave's money, that's your money.

That is your money.

The government has to do right by you, by all of us, and fix this so that you can get your money back as promised when you're a senior citizen and you need it.

There are plenty of ways to work together.

It has to be a bipartisan solution.

And I believe you have to bring the interest groups to the table too.

You have to bring the AARPs to the world, the chambers of commerces, the labor organizations.

You have to bring the political parties, and you have to bring everyone together and hammer out a solution that when you leave the room, after a year or however long it takes, you're all gonna support because otherwise it becomes a political football, and people get demonized for compromising or for accepting a solution and then it becomes a political game again.

And so people have to have faith that they can make the tough decisions that they aren't gonna be demonized.

And then we can get this right on and get it back on track.

And I definitely would be happy to be part of that process.

- So Trygve Hammer, your response.

- Alright, can you imagine if we had gone through the pandemic without Social Security and Medicare, North Dakotans depend on those programs and we need to do everything we can to support them.

I'm particularly concerned about the people we called frontline workers during the pandemic, and not just our medical workers, but people in our grocery stores, people who covered the basics of what we needed to live every day.

If we try to solve this Social Security Trust Fund problem by increasing the retirement age, those are the people who are going to end up bearing the brunt of the problem.

One thing that gets us a lot closer is removing the cap at which income is taxed for Social Security purposes.

I would start there and I would be willing to talk to anybody and bring in all players.

I believe in bringing in subject matter experts, and I would like to get those experts from rural North Dakota rather than the National Associations only.

- Alright, we have a second question from AARP, North Dakota.

Trygve, gets this first.

48 million Americans help their loved ones every day to remain independent in their homes and communities.

These family caregivers sacrifice time and money and provide $600 billion annually on paid support.

How would you help family caregivers?

- I've been a family caregiver.

Just yesterday I learned that we'll be moving my dad from assisted living now into a nursing home or a memory care center.

So this one I strikes me very personally and we do need to support folks out there and I think we can do that through the Social Security program or through Medicare or both.

Those people deserve compensation.

I was going early every morning out to the oil fields, but first stopping to make my dad a meal, coming home at night, and fixing him meals and making sure he was okay before starting the whole thing over again the next morning.

It is a second job and it is extremely tiring, and we need to do everything we can to support the people who are doing that.

- Julie Fedorchak?

- I too, and Trygve, I applaud your devotion to your dad and the personal care you're giving him, that's just awesome.

And as somebody who did that for both my parents throughout very trying times, they both suffered from Alzheimer's and ultimately passed away about eight years ago, six months apart after 60 years of marriage.

It was an honor to to care for them and it's the way it should be.

And I definitely agree with Trygve that we need to have the resources available to support families in providing that in-home care.

Medicare should be flexible enough to help support that, we need to create the innovative systems necessary to support people living in their homes as long as possible, and getting that in-home services.

The truth of the matter is it's often a lot cheaper to serve people in their homes.

So whether it's through Visiting Angels, or some groups that can come in and provide, maybe it's just their prescriptions that they need, or maybe they need help with a meal or two, maybe they need help showering a couple times a week, there's in-home care services that we need to be able to have the Medicare program flexible enough to support that kind of care for people so that they can age in their house as long as possible.

- Trygve, would you like a response?

- This is an issue that North Dakotans care about.

Julie said she's been hearing a lot about the border, but you know, elder care, childcare, so people can work and affordable housing are the three things that I have heard almost constantly, and the one thing I've heard related to Medicare is people talking about their prescription drug prices.

So we need to do something on that as well, but I agree we need to change the system to help fund these things.

And a lot of people would love to do this at home instead of moving their father or mother into a facility because a lot of those facilities have closed down due to our nursing shortage.

- Julie, would you like another shot?

- Sure, I think you can't underestimate the value of creating the right systems to allow for innovation and flexibility.

And when you have like a one size fits all federal program, you lose a lot of that ability.

So these are the kinds of things that I wanna work on as a representative from North Dakota to the extent that we can provide opportunities for states to do things differently, to have block grant programs, or different ways to push more of the management of these things down to the local level, the state level, so that you can support more innovative approaches, approaches that work for the citizens in the states, wherever in the various states.

I think that that's another opportunity that we have to improve, both the care and reduce the costs in our healthcare system as a whole.

- So let's move now to foreign policy.

What are each of your views and ways forward to the Russian Ukraine war, and the Israel Hamas conflict engulfing Gaza.

Julie Fedorchak, you first.

- Obviously these are really complicated issues and it's a very dangerous world out there.

As a member of the house, I know we'll be engaged in and getting security briefings and I will base a lot of my decisions and my votes on what I learn in those security briefings.

But that said, I think it's important to note that a lot of the issues that we're seeing, whether it's Israel, whether it's in the Ukraine, whether it's China, quite honestly, and I hope that we talk a little bit about China in a minute.

But these again, are exploding out there because the US has not provided the strong leadership that is needed.

President Biden has not been engaged like he needs to be, like he has to be, like America has to be on the international level.

I support Ukraine, I support funding for Ukraine, but we need a better plan.

We can't be doing these ad hoc like now we're gonna do this, now we're gonna do that.

What is the plan?

How are we gonna get in and outta there?

What's the strategy?

And let's see, how have we spent the dollars that have already been provided?

There's not enough transparency in this.

Veterans like Trygve, my husband is a veteran, we owe it to the people who put on the uniform in this country, and serve this country to have clear objectives, strong leadership, and not be sending them to places without those very bare minimum things.

So yes, in the Ukraine I think President Trump will work with Putin and the Ukrainian president to get a deal to resolve that issue in short order.

I believe that, I think they both want out of this and their people want out.

And as it relates to Israel, we have to support them a hundred percent, and let them, and support them in their right to defend their country and push back on Iran who is really behind Hezbollah and Hamas and all the damage that's occurring there.

- Trygve?

You know, I feel especially qualified to answer this question.

When I came into the military, we were in the midst of the Cold War.

I cut my teeth as a junior officer, learning about Russian tactics and weapons and how to overcome them.

And then much later when my marine battalion left Iraq, we were replaced by a Ukrainian unit.

They were not part of NATO then, they are not now, but they had our back during the global war on terror and we should have their back now.

I want the United States to always be thought of as a reliable ally, and the only conditions we should put on their weapons and how they use them is following the law of war, and minimizing non-combatant deaths.

And the same thing goes for Israel.

You know, when I was in Iraq and we got in a firefight, when you raised your rifle and all of my marines would do this, you look down those sites and you had to clear between and beyond.

If there was a non-combatant between you and the enemy, or in the line of sight beyond the enemy, you did not pull the trigger.

We should support Israel if they want to defend themselves, we should support any ally in defending itself, but we must make them adhere to the laws of war and minimize non-combatant casualties.

- Would you like a response to it?

- I would absolutely, another thing that we have to remember that at the heart of so many of these international conflicts, especially the Ukraine and Israel, is energy, energy policy.

We should be doubling down on developing energy to help support our allies.

We do not want to be supporting Putin's energy development and his ability to sell his energy throughout the globe to other people who are not our friends.

We need to be doubling down on energy production here in the US.

If you care about the environment, then you should want the most energy to be developed here in the US where we do it cleaner and cheaper and with much higher humanitarian standards than any place else in the world.

We should be developing it here and selling it to our allies around the world, so they can push back against the tyrannies like Iran and like Putin in Russia - Trygve?

- We have to take a long view here, especially on Ukraine.

If we give in to Putin, if we don't have Ukraine negotiating from a position of strength, Putin isn't gonna stop with Ukraine and it's gonna be a lot more expensive to stop him when he's moved into Europe and threatens our NATO allies.

And we have to remember that Xi Jingping is watching, Kim Jong-Un is watching.

They're looking at Taiwan and South Korea and wondering, is the United States that reliable ally?

Will they have their allies backs or not?

And we need to show now that we do.

- Alright, let's move to energy for a second, and energy independence for our country.

Tell me each of your views on how to expand North Dakota's energy industry, and how do fossil fuels and renewable energy play into that?

Trygve Hammer first.

- Well, I've said before that I was a rig hand and work over rigs in the Bakken.

And also that my wife came to North Dakota because of the oil industry.

I am definitely pro-American oil and pro-American energy.

What we need really is an all of the above approach.

Right now we are pumping more oil than any nation in the world ever has.

We need to continue that, we need to continue investments in green energy.

A green energy future is coming whether we like it or not, and if we can lead and innovate, we can take the reigns.

And one thing that will always be a priority for me in any issue, in any legislation is creating and protecting those good paying jobs that don't require a college degree.

And we can have a lot of those in our energy industry.

And when regulation gets in the way, when regulations slows things down, it's up to a congressman to bring that to light, to go after those onerous regulations and help cut them back so the people of North Dakota can do what they need to do.

In the end, we all want clean, safe, reliable energy.

We all want clean air and water, and we can have it.

We just need to lead so we don't get left behind.

- Julie Fedorchak.

- Well there's some really simple things we can do to increase our energy production in North Dakota and in America, and it starts with pushing back on all of the regulations that the Biden administration has brought forward.

In its war on coal and fossil fuels, they have brought forward a clean power plant that would basically require all of our coal fire facilities to shut down by 2032 if they don't have carbon capture and storage technology employed.

That technology is still being developed, we're working hard in North Dakota to bring it to fruition, but the truth of the matter is if they're gonna shut those facilities down, the utilities need to know now so they can replace them.

So those decisions just don't work together, we will lose a massive amount of our coal fleet in this country, which is providing a huge amount of electricity.

We are dangerously close to not having enough electricity to meet the demand today.

The third party, independent engineers, and technicians who run our electric grids are the ones saying that, and that is today.

We cannot move forward with their outrageous EPA regulations on coal, oil and gas, methane rules, the EV requirements, I mean, you name it, they wanna shut down our fossil fuels in this country.

We need them now more than ever, we produce them cleaner and safer and cheaper than any place in the world.

If you care about the environment, you should be doubling down on US energy production.

We do it the best.

The Biden-Harris administration and the Democrat party and who's really largely controlled nationally by their most liberal left, they do not understand this, and they're putting us at great risk.

- Trygve Hammer.

- We can reach that clean energy future.

No one is looking to destroy our energy infrastructure.

Julie mentioned electric demand, and we're not having enough.

Well, right now we are producing more electricity than we use in the United States.

However, here in North Dakota, we've had a lot of data mining operations put in, crypto mining operations put in that eat up at a tremendous amount of energy and create very few jobs.

So we need to watch where we are letting those things into our state.

And again, we need to work to fix those regulations and we have to look to the future and lead.

We can't be constantly complaining about this regulation or that regulation.

We need to go fix those regulations and come up with a positive energy future that we can lead the rest of the United States into.

- Julie Fedorchak.

- We can't lead if we're sitting there at home in the dark, that's my main point.

We have to have power to lead for anything anywhere.

The truth of the matter is, I disagree with Trygve that we should be not pursuing the data mining and the AI.

We need to get that infrastructure in place in the US, we wanna control our own data.

And the Googles of the world, and the ChatGPTs, they are desperate for power, because people are using those resources, they're using those services, and they need to locate their mining services, their data processing services, someplace.

They're going to go somewhere, we should have them here in North Dakota.

It is a huge opportunity.

We're uniquely positioned, we have power, we have water, we have coal climate, and this is a huge opportunity for us in the Bakken, and we should be using our excess gas to generate power to feed those data mining companies so that we can keep those facilities here in the US where we need them, and not in the hands of Russia, China, India, people who are not our friends and allies.

- In our next topic, we're gonna throw you a little bit of a curve ball, just for fun.

Though, it's more of a statewide legislative issue, I want to get you both on the record, your thoughts on Ballot Measure 4 that would eliminate property taxes.

Julie Fedorchak.

- I am a big proponent of that, the government closest to the people is the best.

And this measure goes in the opposite direction of that.

Listen, I understand I don't like paying property tax either and property tax has grown, but I do not think that the answer is to eliminate the property tax.

If you eliminate the property tax, we're gonna have a huge gap in funding for, I think it's $3.2 billion worth of funding that will be missing, that we'll have to replace with something.

And so unless you don't wanna have schools, or fire departments, or police forces in our communities, we're gonna have to find that money somewhere.

So you can eliminate it from property tax, you're gonna pay it someplace else, and I just think it sounds good, and people are frustrated with property taxes, but I don't think in the end it's going to produce the kind of results that people hope for, and I think it's gonna be pretty damaging, potentially damaging to our local communities.

And so I am not in favor of that measure.

- Trygve.

- Yeah, I have paid property taxes around the country, and I bought a house in Minot recently.

And property tax rates here are high, but this is not the solution.

I agree with Julie on that.

We need local control of where that money comes from.

My brother is a firefighter, I've been a school teacher, and we know that our local districts need that control of their budget.

Now it's very hard to get a bond measure passed to fix a school.

When I was teaching high school, we had an elementary half and a and a high school half, and when the pipes froze in the high school half, we actually had to run a hose from the elementary side over to where we were to get that fixed.

We are desperately in need of investment in our school infrastructure.

And so if the state can do something about that, that is the biggest driver of property taxes in most of our counties, most of our districts is supporting the schools.

If we could take care of that, then property taxes would naturally begin to come down.

- Julie, do you have any further response?

- I will just say, I'll make a pitch for local leadership.

Ultimately, these decisions can and should be made by the local leaders.

Those are tough offices, it's hard to run for office, it's hard to serve, and it's probably hardest at the local level, but I would like to encourage folks who are frustrated with this, raise your hand and run for local office, and help be part of the solution to bringing down property taxes and finding good ways to address this problem.

- Trygve anything further?

- I agree, and we have been working really hard in Minot to get people to run for local office and there are many people who run for local office who are also in favor of this measure 4, but definitely it's a bad idea, and North Dakotans ought to reject it.

- Alright, the next topic has to do with homelessness.

North Dakota's largest City Fargo has seen its homeless situation and population getting worse the last few years, especially in the downtown Fargo area.

Bismarck is going to be looking at an ordinance to prevent tenting, you know, outdoor tenting in downtown areas.

What are the solutions, if any, from a federal level to this particular homelessness problem?

Trygve.

- As I said before, affordable housing is one of the issues we've been hearing over and over and over again.

And recently the DOJ came out with an indictment for companies that were colluding on rent.

So we need to keep acting on that and we need to do what we can to incentivize more buildings so that more people can afford to buy homes, so more people can afford to move into apartments, because we've increased that supply and thus brought down the price.

And in the meantime, we need to do everything we can to shelter people and treat them in a humane way, and give them that hand up to become more productive in society and more secure in their housing, and their food, and in their health.

- Julie Fedorchak.

- I think largely this is a local issue, but I do think the federal government can help in a couple of ways.

One, is cracking down on the fentanyl that's pouring over the borders, 'cause a lot of the homeless problem traces back to drug and alcohol abuse.

So we should be doing again, solving the border problem is gonna help with some of these issues as well, make our communities safer.

Secondly, creating jobs and opportunities.

We have to have, help people be healthy and we have to help create an environment that produces a lot of jobs and opportunities so people can get a job, get independent, and take care of themselves and get off the streets.

And I think that those are some basic things that we need to get really serious about in this country.

- In your response?

- I was recently a counselor at Job Corps where we helped those people who were disadvantaged to come in and get trade school, and finish high school, and get out on the economy and contribute to the economy, both in what they do and into the taxes they pay to support our common interests.

- Anything further?

- I would just say again, I think helping people be healthy is really how you get to the crux of the homeless problem.

And then when they're healthy, you can help them, lead them to the jobs or the opportunities to become independent.

But I think that there are stages, there are a great community resources in North Dakota.

I've been involved in some of them in Bismarck for years and really admire and appreciate all the work that the people are on the front lines of trying to solve this problem are doing.

And I think that we all have a part in it, and can help play a part in our communities, and I've been honored to be part of those efforts in the past and look forward to doing more of that in the future.

- Okay, I'm gonna move to a topic about free speech.

Free speech and social media information and disinformation have become very hot topics nationally.

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg recently said he regrets censorship on his platform during COVID.

How do you balance the government's role, if any, in protecting us from what some called dangerous misinformation versus constitutionally protected free speech?

Julie Fedorchak, please.

- Well, boy, it's getting tougher and tougher to find the facts out there and I appreciate everybody's struggle with that.

I've heard a lot about that during this election that people don't know where to go for true information.

I always send them to Prairie Public 'cause in North Dakota, the best information comes from Dave Thompson.

I'm not trying to butter you up, Dave, that is the actual truth.

But I do think that the censorship that has occurred on some of these big platforms is unacceptable.

We need to be able to trust that these platforms aren't doing that.

And so I don't support that.

I think in terms of censorship, people should, or the appropriate way to address some of the concerns of these platforms is giving parents more controls and more access and more tools to use because really the young people are the most vulnerable when it comes to these social media applications.

My husband Mike and I have three children.

We were on 'em like hawks when they were kids on these platforms and trying our best to monitor what they're doing.

Giving parents more tools to use to help mitigate the misinformation and the abuse that can occur online are some things that I think we need to work harder on and big tech needs to work harder on.

- Trygve.

- The 1st Amendment protects us from impingement on our free speech by the government.

These big organizations do have a responsibility, I believe, not so much to censor, but where it's useful and where disinformation could be damaging, they should be able to put something up that says what the real information is, this is countered by this.

I don't have a problem with that at all.

And the other thing we need, we need strong media literacy and civics education in our North Dakota high schools, and even our elementary classrooms to teach students what isn't real and, and what is, and and how to determine what you should trust, and why you shouldn't.

- Let me move on to something else.

This was submitted by a listener and viewer of Prairie Public.

And there is something in the house called and the legislature, I should say in the Congress called the Problem Solvers Caucus.

And I think you're both probably aware of that.

So I'll start with Trygve Hammer, would you be a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus?

- Yes, I would, and actually, as I've been campaigning around North Dakota, I have run into a few different people who've asked me specifically if I would join the Problem Solvers Caucus.

And for those unfamiliar Problem Solvers caucus, it's a bipartisan caucus, they take away those labels, that conservative, that liberal, that progressive, that Democrat, that Republican, and they go after solutions.

And that is exactly what I want to go to the US House of Representatives to do for the people of North Dakota.

Julie Fedorchak.

- Big part of my campaign has been talking about the fact that I don't like to celebrate problems, I like to solve them.

And so absolutely, I've been asked if I'd be a part of this Problem Solvers Caucus, and I plan to join the Problem Solvers Caucus as well.

Kelly Armstrong is a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus.

I've met some other members of that caucus already and look forward to being part of it really.

Ultimately, our citizens are sending us to Washington to be their voice, to be their voice on issues of agriculture, energy, the border, all of those sorts of things, Social Security, this is where we need to break down the borders, or the barriers between the parties and really roll up our sleeves and work together.

And I would look forward to being a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, and caucus that is focused on working out the problems and finding good solutions to them.

- We're coming toward the end of the debate, so I have one other quick question to ask and it has to do with China and tariffs.

So I'd like you to each give me a short, like a minute long answer about do we or should we put tariffs on China?

And we'll start with Julie Fedorchak.

- I think we need to be very serious about China, they hate us and they are a big threat to us and our future.

So we need to address China in a few different ways.

We need to have a strong military, so we're prepared, we need to support our allies in that region, so that they know that we have their backs and we're gonna be strong for them, and that China knows that we're serious, and we need to address them economically too.

We need to stop sending our manufacturing over there and bring more of that home for good jobs here.

And we need to use tariffs to help eliminate some of the economic advantages that they have and that they're taking advantage of.

We also need to get tougher about them stealing our secrets and our innovations.

And so it's a multi-pronged approach with China.

They're a big threat to us, but we need to get serious about it, and I would support those kinds of efforts.

- For Trygve Hammer.

- We do have to worry about China, especially with the theft of our information and our industry.

Tariffs just are not the way to go.

We've heard possibility of 10% tariffs across the board, 60 to a hundred percent tariffs on China.

Tariffs need to be targeted.

You come up with tariffs when you're trying to protect a fledgling industry in your country or an industry that's been knocked down in your country for some reason.

So then you impose tariffs until that industry catches up and they can compete on the global market.

And we have to remember that it's not the other country that pays tariffs, it is the importers.

And then those importers pass those costs on to us.

So unfocused across the board, tariffs would be a really bad idea and would be a huge driver of inflation.

- Well, we have come to that time where it's time for closing statements, and Julie Fedorchak gets the first closing statement.

- Thank you North Dakotans, it's been an honor to serve you for the last 12 years as your public service commissioner, and it's been the blessing of my lifetime to have my roots in this great state.

This is an election of significant consequence and you are choosing a new president, you're sending your one voice to Congress.

I hope that you'll see through me the passion, the experience, and the commitment and the determination to be a strong voice for you in Washington, to work on problems, and to be a voice of change, and solutions in Washington.

Early voting has already started, you can get your ballot.

They send out 40,000 ballots a day.

And so I urge you to get out and vote and I would humbly ask for your support in this election, thank you.

- And Trygve Hammer.

- Oh, thank you.

And let me start by saying this to someone special, to my wife at home, Kelly, you've been so supportive and patient with this whole campaign thing, I love you and thank you very much.

This is an important election and what we need in the house are those people who can reach across the aisle, who do understand how to make things happen.

I have a long history of leadership experience and I have lived in the real economy where North Dakotans work.

And I understand the issues that affect them on a daily basis.

Julie, during this debate has said Biden's name at least eight times.

One person who's definitely not going to be in office when we get to Washington is Joseph R. Biden.

We need people to go to Congress who remember who they swore that oath of office to, and who they work for.

You get a federal paycheck as a representative in the US House, but you work for the people who elected you.

You work for the people of North Dakota.

That's who that seat belongs to, and that's what we need to remember.

- Alright, I'd like to thank our guests, Julie Fedorchak, and Trygve Hammer for agreeing to this important debate.

Again, election day is November 5th, and early voting is underway.

Thank you for tuning into Prairie Public and AARP North Dakota's coverage of Election 2024.

I'm Dave Thompson, good night.

(calming music) - [Announcer] Funding for Election 2024 coverage is provided in part by AARP, a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership association, 83,000 strong in North Dakota.

Find information on how to make your voice heard in the 2024 election at aarp.org/ndvotes, and by the members of Prairie Public.