MINOT — With the North Dakota Republican Party under the control of a populist faction that has
alienated the party’s own statewide incumbents,
and made headlines with a dramatic drop-off in fundraising, members of the party’s governing State Committee, made up of district leaders from across the state, were hoping to get some details about the organization’s fiscal outlook during a Saturday, March 14, meeting.
They went home disappointed.
“No treasurer’s report, no chair’s report,” one frustrated district chair told me. “They stated that we have a lot of business, and we got right to it.”
“In the place of the treasurer’s report, they stated that our cash situation is just fine, and we have a lot of income from the convention,” another peeved district chair told me. “‘We’re going to cover expenses, and it’s going to be great.’ That was the treasurer’s report.”
David Samson / The Forum
I’m told by multiple sources on the State Committee that, while there were some comments made by party Treasurer Stephen Hillerud, no written financial report was provided. It took pushback from some of the district chairs to get a promise to provide one before the party’s state convention later this month.
This isn’t the first time under its present leadership that the party has been belligerently reticent about its financials. In November, after I had published details about the party’s sluggish fundraising, Chairman Matthew Simon
with disciplinary action for providing me with details.
Simon “discussed the ongoing issue of internal communications being leaked to the press,” according to the minutes of that November meeting.
“Should this continue, measures may need to be taken to determine who is leaking this information,” the minutes, which were also provided to me by multiple sources within the NDGOP, went on to say. Several State Committee members suggested that party leaders are hesitant to provide a detailed, written report because it may also end up in my hands, though I’m hardly the only member of the news media covering this story.
Last week, the Bismarck Tribune’s Grant Coursey
about the NDGOP’s fundraising woes, writing that the “state Republican Party reported raising $5,723 in 2025 in its year-end campaign finance disclosure filed with the North Dakota Secretary of State’s Office in January.” As a point of comparison, the Democratic-NPL reported $384,163 in funds raised.
The NDGOP insisted to Coursey that their report, which they filed with state officials themselves, is inaccurate, and that may well be the case. According to
filings the party made with federal election officials,
they reported raising $138,329.44 in individual contributions in calendar year 2025, though the party isn’t required to report all funds raised to the feds. Even so, that’s still far more than they reported in their state report, but still less than half of what the Democratic-NPL raised. If we break it down into month-by-month totals, we can see that the bulk of it, more than $104,000, came before the populist faction took over leadership of the party in June.
State party leaders, including Chairman Simon and Treasurer Hillerud, insisted to State Committee members that the party’s upcoming state convention will be a profitable one, though many are dubious, and for good reason, it seems.
At a press conference last week, responding to the news that the Republican incumbents on the statewide ballot would be skipping the convention,
Simon suggested that about 1,000 delegates would be in attendance.
That’s deeply unlikely. The figure Simon touted is a tally of all the people elected by local districts to attend. Even in less fractious times, about 10% to 20% of delegates end up not attending because of things like bad weather, funerals, work commitments, etc. Now that those delegates know that the statewide incumbents won’t be at the convention, you can expect even more to opt out.
The more optimistic party insiders I’ve spoken to are estimating attendance will be more in the 700 range, while others are saying 500 or less. That uncertainty is a nightmare for party leaders who must prepare to accommodate the maximum number of delegates, even if the number who pay their party dues and convention fees is far less.
The bulk of the time at the party’s marathon Saturday meeting — it went from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a 45-minute break for lunch — was spent wrangling over a raft of significant and controversial rule changes aimed at pushing elected officials further away from the party.
The most egregious of these — including one that
would expel and fine NDGOP members
for failing to obey the party platform and another that would remove the top-elected Republicans, including the governor and legislative majority leaders, as voting members of the party’s executive committee — were withdrawn over procedural concerns. They weren’t defeated, however, and State Committee members I spoke to expect them to come back at a later date.
Some other proposed rule changes pertaining to fees candidates pay to be considered for the party’s convention endorsement, and a prohibition on candidates who campaigned against Republicans previously, were also defeated. In the past, the populist faction has railed against the candidate fees, as they made it difficult for some of their more fringe candidates to compete at the convention. Also, the prohibition on candidates who campaigned in previous cycles as independents was what kept populist leader Rick Becker from seeking the party’s U.S. House endorsement at the 2024 convention.
After losing the party’s convention endorsement for the U.S. Senate in 2022,
he ran in that cycle’s general election as an independent.
In 2024, he attended the party’s state convention, but couldn’t seek the endorsement for the U.S. House. Instead, he urged delegates there to
purposefully spoil their ballots
, and he took his campaign to the June primary.
Both rules are staying in place, with one observer suggesting to me that the candidate fees, in particular, may be staying in place because the party needs the money.
But the big concern, again, is the lack of financial details coming from the party. “We haven’t seen a financial report. We didn’t get one in November. We didn’t get one in June. It’s been a long time. Multiple meetings,” one State Committee member told me after the Saturday meeting. “If we are hunky dory, show me the numbers.”