Governor John Hoeven

Finding synergy between the old and new
When Governor John Hoeven of North Dakota officially announced that he would run for Senate next fall, ABJ’s Antonia McGuire caught up with the young, ambitious politician who is also a former executive banker for an exclusive interview before he hits the campaign trail. Weighing in on various topics from renewable sources of energy to the economy, find out why Governor Hoeven thinks a banking reform is ever so necessary and why he’s taking a market-based approach in the healthcare debate.

Antonia McGuire: You've passed a responsible budget with plans to make big sacrifices and it is very stringent. How is North Dakota trying to set an example in terms of coming out of this recession with a strong economy?

Gov. John Hoeven:  We’re on a biennium or two-year cycle so, our budget was set last year and we won’t be going through that process until next session—January 2011. In our budget, we emphasized three areas: 1] properly funding priorities like education, infrastructure, law enforcement and healthcare, 2] building a good financial reserve for the future and we’ve done that, and 3] providing tax relief including proposed broad based plans to reduce income and property tax.

AM: Have you achieved those two objectives?

JH: Yes, we did. We put through the broad-based plans to reduce both income and property tax, which help build the best climate we can to promote business and entrepreneurship, to help our businesses grow and expand. We’re working to keep our economy growing through this national recession.

AM: You’ve recently visited Kosovo on a special delegation recently. Why is it important to you that North Dakota leave its mark on the war-torn country?

JH:  We have 600 to 700 of our national soldiers leading an international peacekeeping mission force called the Multinational Battleground East, in the eastern part of Kosovo. There 2,000 D.A.R.T. soliders and about five countries’ national guards are working together and doing such a wonderful job, so I went over to express our support and see if there’s anything they need to do their mission.

It is really about creating not just democracy and peace in Kosovo, in the Balkans, but also important in terms of stabilizing the political environment in the area and maintaining peace in that part of Europe. Of course, over the long term, it’s about building allies and making our country more secure.

AM: You were once an executive banker before entering the world of politics. With the banking reform bill now before the Senate, what do you think of it—will this banking reform help or hinder Americans?

JH: I think the reform will strengthen the banking sector so that we don’t go through the kind of volatility and risk that we’ve seen recently in the financial markets. We cannot get into these bailout situations then pick winners and losers, that’s not the thing to do. We need the kind of reform that will avoid that sort of thing and strengthen our country for the future.

AM: What are your thoughts about the Obama administration’s approach in the efforts to have a reform?

JH: There is a lot of work to be done there so I think we need to approach it in a bipartisan way to accomplish what I just described.

AM: It’s been said that small businesses are going to be leading the new U.S. economy. How do your priorities in promoting business growth and putting small business owners or entrepreneurs at the forefront aid North Dakota’s economic development?

JH:  Small business is really the engine that drives our economy; small businesses create jobs and investments, grow our economy, improve our standard of living and quality of life, they create competition that benefits the consumer with better products, goods and services. It’s very important that we create a healthy environment for them not just here in North Dakota but nationally, that encourages and fosters business growth. That means the right legal or regulatory and tax framework that empowers entrepreneurs and small businesses so they can expand.

AM: Like the Basin Electric Power Line in North Dakota that just got improved?

JH: Yes, we’ve made tremendous strides in energy and that means not just traditional sources like coal, oil and natural gas but also wind, biofuel, ethanol, biodiesel and biomass so, we’re really growing as an energy producing state. That’s important for our state, it’s also important for our country.

AM: What are some challenges that you’ve faced in your career?

JH: I always see challenges as doing everything that I can do to help build the future for this state. That’s the challenge that brought me to this job, and that’s a process that you keep working on—like growing the community, increases wages and cutting taxes so our economy can grow. But we’ve got to do more than just that. This national recession has really been a challenge for us. We’ve had to work through that and get our country back in the mode creating jobs and opportunities for our people.

AM: Like the expanded air service with Delta.

JH: Yes, that’s a good example. This new air service will give more options for consumers who want to travel but this also helps from a business standpoint.

AM: You are running for Senate this fall—if and when you’re elected, what would be the first piece of legislation that you’d try to push through?

JH: First off, we’re working very hard just to get our message out and get elected but of course, that’s up to people of North Dakota. Job creation is job number one. That’s been our focus here in North Dakota and that’s got to be focus at the national level to boost our national economy. The priority would be something to help our businesses invest and growth.

We were just taking about energy and one example of a piece of legislation would be a comprehensive energy policy much like the one we have in North Dakota (ENpower North Dakota). That’s the kind of energy legislation we need at the national level, a comprehensive energy policy that encourages and incentivizes the development of all our sources of energy in this country. It’s a job creator, a domestic security issue and a quality of life issue.

AM: Certainly, energy is major sector in your state. What about sustainable development in terms of business practices or renewable energy—how have you demonstrated that this is important to you?

JH: We’re moving forward aggressively with renewable energy as well. In addition to the traditional—that is oil and gas, coal and natural gas—we’re very aggressive in developing our renewable sources of energy. We’re now the 10th largest wind producing state out of all 50 and as soon as we add another 50 megawatts, we’re adding much more than that at rapid pace, I think we’ll rank eighth very soon. I think we’ll be at fifth place in the near future. In ethanol and biodiesel, we’ve put hundreds of millions gallons of production and we’re also putting more biomass, that’s certainly an important part of our energy development and we emphasize it very aggressively.

We’re also creating important partnerships between renewable sources of energy and traditional, for example power plans and wind farms utilizing transmissions lines. Or, ethanol plants taking the waste steam off power plants and using it as their energy source to produce ethanol for transportation as well as using some gray water from our communities and using that to make ethanol. We’re creating those synergic partnerships between traditional and renewable sources of energy.

AM: It’s neat to see how some of the old and new industries are collaborating to move forward, isn’t it?

JH: It is, and it also improves the environmental stewardship. For example, almost all of oil drilling now is horizontal, meaning you drill down and then horizontally for miles to access the resource underground with a small footprint. We also have the only plant that turns coal into natural gas and then captures C02, that gets compressed and pipelined to another facility for secondary recovery.

AM: Is that part of the Weyburn Project?

JH: It is indeed. The Weyburn oil field is the only one that uses C02 for secondary oil recovery. All that C02 comes from our plant in North Dakota.

AM: Your values and priorities are very family-centric—how does your personal faith influence you to put your family at the forefront of the healthcare policy?

JH: I’ve been truly blessed both with my family growing up and now, with my wife, Mickey and our children. In terms of my approach towards policies, I think in terms of how we build our state whether that’s through education or being tough on crime or whether it is creating an environment that is friendly and has a good quality of life. I think my family certainly influences how we go about in doing those things and I try to create a better environment for the people I serve, whether that is in North Dakota or the country.

AM: How do you feel about President Obama’s current healthcare bill before Senate—are you comfortable with all aspects in that bill?

JH: I oppose that bill and I don’t support it; that’s a large, government-run healthcare plan. I do not think that’s the way to go. I think we need to take an approach that empowers people and that means reform, enhancing competition for purchasing health insurance across state lines, transparency in pricing, portability of insurance, not allowing healthcare providers to deny people for pre-existing conditions or not raising premiums if one gets sick. I think these are the kind of market-based reforms that we need to undertake, not the big government run healthcare bill that the Senate recently approved. The House passed a bill through which I do not support the approach that [the Democrats] were taking; now they are trying to re-group to see if there’s bipartisan support. They haven’t come up with anything yet, but, I think it’ll have to be along the lines of a market-based solution as I described.

AM: What’s on your iPod?

JH: I have one that I listen to while jogging and I’ve got quite a variety of music on it—musicals like Jersey Boys, which is of course, Frankie Valle and the Four Seasons, to Andrew Lloyd Webber, Joseph Technicolor Dreamcoat, as well as country western, rock, 50s… I usually like something up tempo so I can keep moving as I jog.

AM: Thank you for sharing your perspectives and for your time, Governor.

http://governor.nd.gov/

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