GOP Senate candidate lashes Orangutan...

GOP Senate candidate lashes out at Trump’s legislative director

By BURGESS EVERETT

Rep. Kevin Cramer, one of the GOP's top Senate recruits, launched an unusual attack on the White House's legislative director Wednesday, blaming him explicitly for the party’s legislative failures in the Senate.

The comments from Cramer (R-N.D.) come amid rising GOP angst over President Donald Trump's close relationship with his opponent in the North Dakota Senate race, Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp.

Heitkamp was the only Democrat invited to the White House last week for a bank deregulation bill signing, alarming some White House aides and Republicans. After POLITICO published a story on Wednesday outlining the awkward dynamic between Heitkamp, Cramer and the White House, Cramer told North Dakota radio host Rob Port that he had done some digging and believes that there “are some people in the White House that think, you know, the president’s too friendly too her.”

Then Cramer laid into White House legislative affairs director Marc Short for two prominent failed GOP efforts in the Senate: Repeal of Obamacare and the rollback of an Obama-era regulation that would limit flaring and venting from oil and gas wells. Heitkamp voted against both and Cramer has criticized her in particular over the flaring vote.

"If Marc Short was very good at his job, you know, we’d have a repeal and replacement of Obamacare, we’d have a replacement of the venting and flaring rule," Cramer said.

In an interview last week with POLITICO, Cramer insisted he is not angry over Trump’s political flirtations with Heitkamp: “Not the case at all. I’ve been fine with it. I just don't think it hurts me.” And on Wednesday on Port’s show, Cramer said the spat over Heitkamp’s attendance at the banking bill signing “just seems to be an argument between Marc Short and other people in the White House.”

Short extended an invitation to Heitkamp to the bill signing, but also has knocked Heitkamp for opposing the GOP’s tax law. He did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Heitkamp has tried to stay out of the back and forth, though she is playing up her collaborations with a president that won her state in 2016 by more than 35 points.

“The president has got bigger fish to fry and bigger problems to solve than whether Kevin likes him more than I do,” Heitkamp said.