Plain Talk With Rob Port

Minot, N.D. — Sen. Jessica Bell, a Republican from District 33, has a lengthy track record of reliably conservative policy making in the North Dakota Senate, which includes her consequential work to save a coal-fired power plant that employs, directly and indirectly, thousands of her constituents. Yet the delegates at the NDGOP's local district convention didn't endorse her for re-election. Instead they endorsed a man named Keith Boehm, who campaigned against Bell based on her votes against a bill regulating transgender participation in North Dakota school activities. How did a culture war issue come to be so much more important than jobs and taxes and sound governance? Sen. Bell talked about it on this episode of Plain Talk. "It was a bad bill," she said in explanation of her vote on the transgender activities issue. "It was poorly written." She said North Dakota's elected officials ought to be focused on issues important to North Dakota, and not national culture war issues. "Just because we saw it on Fox Ne