Republican dispute over proposed North Dakota power line reveals a divided party
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Tensions are still simmering among North Dakota District 28 Republican party members after a physical altercation broke out at what was supposed to be a routine meeting on Feb. 22. A controversial power line to two data centers is at the center of the dispute.
Tim Leppert, a District 28 constituent and a Republican, said he’s been fed up with his GOP representatives in the state legislature, Mike Brandenburg and Jim Grueneich, for a while. He says the lawmakers are favoring the interests of big business over local residents' concerns, especially when it comes to data centers and the transmission lines that power them.
“We see a steady erosion of our local government control and an erosion of property rights of the people here,” Leppert said.
Leppert and a group of eight others disrupted the meeting of the district 28 GOP in which party members had planned to select delegates for the upcoming state Republican party convention in Minot, N.D.
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Leppert’s group hired an expert in parliamentary rules and procedures to take control of the meeting.
The parliamentarian, Wendi Baggeley, made a motion to remove Rep. Brandenburg as chairman of the meeting. Video of the meeting posted on social media shows her walking toward Brandenburg and taking the microphone from him.
“I have been hired to help the individuals in this district,” Baggeley is heard saying in the video.
The disruptive group wanted party members to vote on a resolution supporting more local control over projects such as the controversial JETx transmission line. Last year, Rep. Brandenburg (R-Edgeley), sponsored House Bill 1258, which allows the state permitting process to effectively ignore local zoning regulations in the construction of an electric transmission facility.
The bill passed and was signed into law, paving the way for construction to begin this summer on the 92-mile-long, 345-kilovolt JETx transmission line that would run between Jamestown, N.D., to Ellendale, N.D. Both towns have new, massive data centers that require a lot of electricity.
“It starts at one data center and ends at another data center,” said Richard Long, another Republican constituent part of the disruptive group. “And they want to claim it's for grid reliability. So we're just not buying it.”
Brandenburg, who chaired the meeting, said he and his colleagues tried to explain that the group and Baggeley, the parliamentarian making the motion to remove him as chair, were violating meeting rules. He said that because their resolution hadn’t been on the meeting agenda published ahead of time, it could not be considered.
“I tried to reason with her and tried to tell her that she couldn't speak because she wasn't a paid member, and she just went on and on and on and pretty much tried to take it over,” he said.
For a few minutes, Baggeley went back-and-forth with Brandenburg on the rules of parliamentary procedure, with the two groups of Republicans shouting at each other. Someone tried to take the microphone back from Baggeley, leading to some pushing and shoving.
Brandenburg eventually adjourned the meeting and the original group left without selecting delegates for the state convention.
“I don't know what they did afterwards, but the meeting was adjourned, and that's what the bylaws allow us to do,” said Brandenburg.
Leppert said he and others felt forced to take control of the meeting after being ignored.
“We have reached out to them and asked them to have a voice at our district meetings,” said Leppert.
But he said that he’s never been able to meet with his representatives, his requests were either canceled or ignored.
“They refused to hear us,” he said. “We didn't do anything illegally there.”
Brandenburg says the group was nothing but a loud minority.
“They've made a lot of noise, and they come to meetings and disrupt them, but the majority of the people want this to happen, and that's who I represent,” he said.
The intra-party dispute is the latest of many in recent months and years, as controversial data center projects roil local political tensions and divide communities across the country.
Leppert says that the power transmission line is being put in against the wishes of local landowners. He says he wants the line farther away from people’s property in case of fire and to protect people from electromagnetic fields, or EMFs.
According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), there is no strong link between non-ionizing EMFs (the kind that power lines emit) and cancer.
“We just asked for a minimum half-mile setback away from the property. The power companies say that's unreasonable and it's excessive and extreme to protect our citizens in our township,” said Leppert.
As of now, the setback is a minimum of 500 feet.
Power lines have caused serious damage in the past.
In late 2024, a fire in the northwest corner of North Dakota torched 13,000 acres of trees after a windstorm blew brush into a power line.
Richard Long, another constituent, says he worries that could happen again.
“If that line falls down and starts a cornfield on fire, the wind is blowing, and we burn up somebody's farm, what do you think is going to happen?”
Applied Digital, a technology company, owns data centers in both Jamestown and Ellendale, where the JETx line will run. They also plan to build a data center in Harwood, just outside of Fargo.
Otter Tail Power Company, the company behind construction of the line, says on their website that the JETx project “is not being built because of one specific entity or project. The purpose of the JETx line is to enhance overall reliability and reduce generator congestion of the grid not only in North Dakota, but across the Upper Midwest.”
