Letter to the editor:Heitkamp is the right choice for the U.S. Senate

Second chances don’t often happen in life. North Dakotans are fortunate to have a second chance to get it right and elect Heidi Heitkamp to higher office this fall.

Say what you will, but her election bid in 2000 pitted her against two foes — an opponent and cancer. I know people who didn’t vote for Heitkamp, simply because she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. As a breast cancer survivor myself, that is beyond sad. Cancer doesn’t define a person. It’s not who they are or what they can and will do. Cancer, if anything, makes a person more determined.

For years, Heitkamp has proven herself to be a strong, “can do, roll-up-your-sleeves” leader, who has served our state with distinction as our former attorney general and as a director for the Dakota Gasification synfuels plant. She is an attorney, a mother, a wife, a neighbor, a North Dakotan who is known from Fargo to Beach by only her first name. She is one of us — the 99 percent, not the 1 percent.

There are only 17 women currently serving in the U.S. Senate. Companies across this country are finally realizing the importance of having a female perspective in the boardroom for diversity and financial success, so why not the U.S Senate?

Heitkamp is the right choice, not just because she is a woman. But because she is the best candidate for the job. Never squander second chances.

Pam Musland

Jamestown

Tags: opinion, letters, politics