Plain Talk With Rob Port

North Dakota's primary elecitons this year were brutal. Attack ads and dirty tricks are endemic to politics, but I think most people would admit that, by the standards of our state, the Republican campaigns in this cycle were rough. In legislative races, we saw ads suggesting that some incumbent lawmakers promote pornography to children, or that they would be unsafe to allow your children around. In the U.S. House primary, some unknown entity supporting Rick Becker's campaign was sending out text messages trying to fool voters into thinking Julie Fedorchak, who ultimately won that race, had pulled out. And in the gubernatorial race, Tammy Miller's campaign ran ads accusing Kelly Armstrong of enriching himself by helping child molesters avoid justice. But when Armstrong appeared on this episode of Plain Talk to recap the race, he shrugged the attacks off. "You can't take these things seriously," he told me and my co-host Corey Mock. Armstrong now faces Democratic-NPL candidate Merrill Piepkorn in the general e