[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 197 (Thursday, December 13, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7533-S7534]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO HEIDI HEITKAMP

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, finally, to my dear friend and about my 
dear friend, the Senator from North Dakota. The task sadly falls to me 
to begin saying goodbye to Members of our caucus who will not be 
returning in the 116th Congress. This morning, I would like to begin 
with the junior Senator from North Dakota.
  Heidi Heitkamp had a childhood that sounds like it was ripped from 
the pages of a frontier epic. She grew up as one of seven kids born 
over 9 years in a house with three bedrooms, in a town with a 
population south of 100. Do the math. That means that around one-tenth 
of the town was Heitkamps.
  Inside the household, the lack of space meant that Heidi's room was 
also her brother's room and also the laundry room. According to her 
sisters, the presence of a laundry machine had almost no effect on her. 
She read and read, and rarely, if ever, did she participate in the 
washing or folding of the Heitkamp laundry.
  Her siblings didn't seem to mind, at least not too much. As Julie 
Heitkamp said about growing up with Heidi, ``She was so good . . . it 
was annoying.''
  It turned out that the bookworm from a small town in North Dakota was 
destined for great things. When she worked for Senator Kent Conrad, the 
outstanding Democrat from North Dakota, he realized the same goodness 
in Heidi her sisters recognized, and he encouraged her to run for State 
auditor at the age of 28. She didn't win that race, but she ran again 
for State tax commissioner and won and, again, for

[[Page S7534]]

attorney general and won--fighting on behalf of sexual assault 
survivors and against the abusive practices of the tobacco industry. 
She would run for Governor and, eventually, for the Senate--losing the 
first but winning the second. She would become the first woman ever 
elected to the Senate from the great State of North Dakota.
  For someone who came from where Heidi came, that election might have 
felt like a culmination--but no. For Heidi, it was just the beginning. 
It was not about winning or even beating the odds. It was about what 
you did with the time you had when you were here.
  As Heidi talked about in her farewell speech, what is important is 
how we use our time. Let the history books report just how well the 
Senator from North Dakota used her time while she has been here.
  Heidi had been able to bring Democrats and Republicans together 
during a time of extraordinary partisan divisions--one of the few who 
could do it so successfully on such major issues. It had been because 
she understood how each side saw an issue, what each side wanted, and 
what a compromise could look like. Once she knew an agreement was 
possible, she worked like no other to see that it was achieved.
  That is how she got Senator Whitehouse and Senator McConnell on the 
same energy bill having to do with carbon capture--a remarkable feat 
with a staunch environmentalist who gives speeches on the floor every 
day about green and with a Senator from a coal State who defends that 
industry. That is how she created the first AMBER Alert in Indian 
Country. It was with our dearly departed friend, Senator McCain. That 
is how she helped to shut down backpage and child sex trafficking on 
the internet with broad bipartisan support.
  What a great legacy--all of it bipartisan. That instinct for 
compromise and consensus was born from her life experience. In her 
family of nine, Heidi was known as the arbitrator. Even her name is a 
compromise. Born Mary Kathryn, Heidi became ``Heidi'' because there was 
a ``Mary'' and a ``Kathryn'' in her grade school class. She gladly 
accepted the nickname.
  Of course, there have been times Heidi couldn't bring our two sides 
together on an issue because she had already been further along than 
both sides.
  Senator Heitkamp has been the first to really drive home in the 
Senate the plight of Native American women. She has worked at it 
tirelessly because she believes that if people were to know about the 
poverty and abuse and addiction that has plagued many reservations and 
how they affect both the men and women, they would be up in arms about 
it. So she wrote the first bill to create a Commission on Native 
American Children who suffer from rates of poverty, malnutrition, and 
education disparity far above other populations. A little while ago, it 
became law and received funding. Recently, it had its first meeting--a 
legacy that will live on. She also wrote Savanna's Act to address the 
epidemic of missing and murdered Native American women. It passed the 
Senate unanimously just a few weeks after the election.
  Well, Heidi, the Senate is catching up to you, and we intend to use 
the time we have to build on the incredible legacy you leave on these 
issues. Just so I will never forget what your service has meant to this 
Chamber, I will always keep the picture of the three Heitkamp sisters 
on my wall in my office--all with their high North Dakota cheekbones. 
It is going to stay there to be a reminder of what Heidi has done and, 
more importantly, I am sure she would say, as a reminder of the many 
things we still have to do to continue the great legacy she will leave.
  Those of us on this side of the aisle--at least I--will miss her 
cornbread as well, her insistence on Corona beer, and her ability to 
suffer even the worst Fargo accents--or mimicking of Fargo accents as I 
attempted to do--that were directed in her way.
  All of us in this Chamber will sure miss the junior Senator from 
North Dakota--her warmth, her passion, her sincerity, her political 
courage. We owe a debt of gratitude to Darwin, her husband, and to her 
children Ali and Nathan for borrowing Heidi for these years. We wish 
them all the best as well.
  I yield the floor.

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