Remarkable Run Ends for ‘Team North Dakota’

Senator Byron L. Dorgan, at left, and Senator Kent Conrad, right, helped campaign for Representative Earl Pomeroy in October.

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
NYT

WASHINGTON — By now, Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Senator Kent Conrad and Representative Earl Pomeroy — best friends and Democrats who spent the last 18 years serving as North Dakota’s entire Congressional delegation — are the stuff of so much political lore in their home state, it can be hard to separate the tall tales from reality.

But this much at least is true: In 1974, Mr. Dorgan, then the 32-year-old state tax commissioner, was making his first run for Congress. Mr. Conrad, then 26, was his campaign manager. And Mr. Pomeroy, 22, was the driver.

As legend has it, Mr. Pomeroy made a wrong turn one day into South Dakota (or maybe it was Minnesota), and Mr. Dorgan lost — his only political defeat in a career in public service ultimately spanning more than 40 years. “We were always late,” Mr. Dorgan said, recalling the ’74 campaign.

Mr. Conrad said: “Earl was always lost and never on time. That’s not true, but that’s what we say.”

(More here.)