Heidi Heitkamp Victory Speech- Nov. 8, 2012

You guys, I wanted so much to come back here and I can’t tell you how moved I am by all of you, once again, coming out to congratulate me. But the reason why I wanted to do this, is that I wanted to congratulate all of you. Every person in this room contributed to this event. Every person in this room contributed to this victory. Every person who manned a telephone, who wrote a check, who called their friends and neighbors, put up signs, and talked, and talked, and talked, wrote letters to the editor, talked to the media, did anything you could to get out the message, and believed. And in this room are people who dared to believe. People who dared to believe against the odds that we could win a senate seat in North Dakota. So to the extent people are calling this an upset, pat yourselves on the back. But I also want to say this that we need to renew our commitment today. We need to renew our commitment today, to working together. And I am extraordinarily grateful, and very, very proud to say that Congressman Berg called me yesterday, did a terrific job wishing us all well. It’s a hard fought campaign and those are hard, hard telephone calls to make. And I want to tell you something about Congressman Berg, I was talking to Kent Conrad and I said, I don’t know quite when Congressman Berg is going to call. He said that he never, but once, got a telephone call from someone who was his challenger. You think about that, and I want you to measure that against Congressman Berg calling me not once, but twice yesterday. I also received a call from Senator John Hoeven, Senator Hoeven and I got into pretty lengthy policy discussions. All the things we were going to do working together for the best outcomes for the people in North Dakota and the people of this country. All of us promised, there is no mystery what this campaign is about. This campaign was about walking across the aisle, and solving the problems of North Dakota and the problems of America, the right way. The North Dakota way. The way that we do things here. You know I talked within our campaign about the coffee table in every small town, and even in towns as large as Fargo. I said there’s a coffee table out there, where people sit down every day, and they solve all of the problems of the world. All of the problems of the world are solved at these coffee shops. You know what? I’ve never been someone who’s sat at those tables who thought everyone agreed. In fact, there’s some people who really disagree, who sit at those tables. But somehow, like I said, they managed to put up the Christmas lights in their small towns, they manage to fix the rows in the church, and they manage to get things done for their communities because they know how to get along, and that’s what we’re about. That’s why we won this race, because we talked about getting along and getting the job done for the people of this state, and for the people of America.

I did not make this decision lightly. Most of you know I have a wonderful life, in fact, one of my great hesitations was that I didn’t want to live anywhere else except North Dakota. I love this state, I love where we are. People laugh at me out of state when I say, “you’ve got to come to North Dakota!” You’ve got to see what we’ve got, because it’s pretty darn great. So job one, getting our fiscal house in order. And you know Kent Conrad’s been your champion for years, I promise you that I’ll continue in that name to take a look at what we’re going to do to fix our economy, and fix our fiscal difficulties. We cannot continue to do what we’re doing. It may disappoint some of you down the road when we make those tough decisions, but understand this, that I care deeply about passing an America onto the next generation, that is debt free, that is path forward, so that we don’t burden our children with this debt, and that we continue to provide great economic opportunity, because we’ve done our job. We’ve done our job in our generation. We need a farm bill, we need a national energy policy, we need to have people who know how to get along, and I can tell you, I am so excited to join Amy Klobuchar. Just a quick story, and I don’t know how many of you were here when Amy was here for the “Hot Dish with Garrison,” anyways, we were at an event, and I told people how extraordinarily popular Amy was in North Dakota, and if I could just be a little bit more like Amy. I will tell you, Amy is not known as the best dresser in Washington, I’m going to go shopping with Amy at Herbergers and maybe if people see us together, they’ll give me a little boost. We’ve got a big job ahead of us. We’ve got a big job ahead of us, but I know with all of you who are the wind at my back, and with Senator Kent Conrad, and Senator John Hoeven, I know that we can do the right things for North Dakota. I wanted to come here, and once again, be at this great hall that we have filled up 3 or 4 times in this campaign. Because we know that Cass County made the difference. I won by almost 10,000 votes from this county. And in a campaign where we think about things, and where we think about all the people, and I see some of you in the back who just absolutely dug deep. And we’ve got new legislators in here, we have new opportunity in here, but I want you to think about this, I want you to think about a country where a girl whose dad was a seasonal construction manager, and whose mom was a school cook, can be standing in front of you as the next Senator of the United States.

Speech from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj_LwWKz1ik ;