Change may inevitable in the days leading up to the midterm elections, but it did not come in 2022. For all the excitement that was made over various developments in the last few months, the end result offered few surprises if any. Ultimately the voters of North Dakota leaned towards the known and familiar, with one major exception.

Whatever hope the independent candidates Cara Mund and Rick Becker represented to those fed up with the two-party binary didn’t last long after the first precincts started reporting in. Incumbents John Hoeven and Kelly Armstrong safely cruised to victory, despite facing fiery and celebrated opposition candidates. North Dakotans know what to expect from their current delegates at this point, and their track records outweighed whatever discontent was present over the contested abortion ban and allegations of chicanery at the GOP convention.

With Becker leaving the legislature, it’s hard to say what direction his political career is going to take. Without a party to caucus with, or an office to hold, I guess he may just have to settle for his plastic surgery practice and his show on BEK. If nothing else he serves as a local example of the flagging power and influence of Trumpist rhetoric that has come to define the outcome of several prominent races nationally.

Cara Mund on the other hand finds herself with a wide-open political career, that is if she’s willing to learn from the mistake of associating with and adopting the patter of the Dem-NPL. Out one side of her mouth Mund bristled at the “name-calling” of being labeled a “Democrat,” but what came out of the other was often indistinguishable from your bog-standard grievance mongering liberal. Mund did herself no favors when she fell into the embrace of a party that can’t be bothered to rustle up candidates for any of the 57 races across the state where a Republican ran unopposed.

As far as the North Dakota Dem-NPL is concerned, I’ll have to go digging into my thesaurus to find a new word to describe their performance and intentions, as moribund doesn’t quite describe it at this point. Terminal might be a better description, due in part to the dedicated disdain the national Democratic party has had for rural and red state voters for decades now.

If state Democrats cared more about the issues and concerns actually affecting North Dakotans rather than parroting the platform and priorities of the national party maybe more people would show up at local meetings. It’s just a thought, one I’ve voiced before in this column, but it bears repeating.

At this point it’s myopic to lay the blame for the party’s struggles in the state at the feet of AM talk radio hosts and 4chan memes. While local Dems can trust the Biden administration to wield control over national discourse on social media platforms, as of yet this influence has not reached the voters in their state. Eventually at some point they have to actually try to win some meaningful elections here at home.

Due to other results from Tuesday, it’s going to be even harder for the Dem-NPL and even the GOP to find quality candidates going forward. Voters came out in force for Measure 1, which added term limits to the state legislature and the governor. For all the handwringing over our state’s good old boys club running the show, in a few cycles even the most plugged-in politico may have trouble recognizing all the new faces.

The real power in North Dakota politics going forward will not be those elected to office, but the lobbyists, who likely will wield even more influence over how bills are drafted. Not to mention the ballooning number of permanent support and administrative positions that will inevitably be created to make up for the draining of institutional knowledge and experience. The bureaucrats are in charge now, and I’m not sure anyone who voted for Measure 1 considered the reality of what implementing it could be.

Voters did shoot down marijuana legalization brought forward by Measure 2, electing instead to maintain prohibition, unwilling to open the doors to an industry and product many are still skeptical of. The saying goes that North Dakota is about 10 years behind the progressions and reforms of the rest of the country. For the time being, North Dakotan’s are content having the devil’s lettuce cultivated in someone else’s back yard.

Given the odor wafting from the homes and vehicles of my next-door neighbors, weed is already here, and unlikely to go anywhere.