Rick Berg

Richard Alan Berg (born August 16, 1959) is an American businessman and Republican politician who served as the U.S. representative for North Dakota’s at-large congressional district from January 3, 2011, to January 3, 2013. A member of the Republican Party, he served one term in the United States House of Representatives, during which he sat on the influential House Ways and Means Committee and participated in the legislative process at a significant period in American history, representing the interests of his North Dakota constituents.

Berg was born in Maddock, North Dakota, and raised on a farm near Hettinger, North Dakota. His father worked as a large-animal veterinarian and his mother was a writer, and his family background was shaped in part by his grandfather’s immigration to the United States from Norway. He attended local schools and graduated from Hettinger High School. An accomplished wrestler, he earned a wrestling scholarship to the North Dakota State College of Science, which he attended for a year before transferring to North Dakota State University in Fargo. At North Dakota State University he completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in agricultural economics, a field of study that would later inform both his business career and his legislative interests.

After college, in 1982, Berg co-founded Midwest Management Company, a real-estate management firm based in Fargo. The company grew and was renamed Goldmark Property Management in 1994. In 1987 he moved to an affiliated commercial real estate company spun off from Midwest, deepening his involvement in the region’s commercial property sector. In 1996, together with other early partners in Midwest, he founded Goldmark Commercial Corporation, which was later renamed Goldmark Schlossman Commercial Real Estate. As of 2011, Berg had worked at Goldmark since 1981 and, in 2005, he was promoted to senior vice president of Goldmark Schlossman Commercial Real Estate Services. His success in real estate contributed significantly to his personal wealth; at the time of his election to Congress, he was reported to be the 13th wealthiest member of that body.

Berg entered elective politics in 1984 when he ran for the North Dakota House of Representatives from the 10th House District, based in Fargo. He won that race and was re-elected every four years thereafter until his congressional run in 2010. Following redistricting, he ran in the newly drawn 45th House District in 2002 and won a seat with 31 percent of the vote, securing re-election in 2006 with 28 percent. Over more than two decades in the North Dakota House, he rose steadily through the Republican leadership. In 1991 he became chair of the House Republican caucus, and in 1993 he briefly served as speaker of the House. As speaker, he proposed a controversial new education funding system aimed at making state payments to school districts more equitable. In 2003 he became House majority leader, a position from which he helped shape the legislative agenda of the Republican majority. During his state legislative career, Berg supported President George W. Bush’s 2005 proposal to partially privatize Social Security through private accounts, voted in 2007 for North Dakota House Bill 1489, which proposed making abortion a class AA felony even in cases of rape and incest, and consistently aligned himself with pro-business and conservative positions. In 2009 he received the Petroleum Council’s Legislator of the Year award and the North Dakota Chamber of Commerce’s Greater North Dakotan Award in recognition of his support for business and energy interests.

On January 20, 2010, Berg officially announced that he was seeking the Republican endorsement to run for North Dakota’s at-large seat in the United States House of Representatives. He secured the GOP nomination at the Republican state convention in March 2010, winning the right to challenge nine-term Democratic incumbent Earl Pomeroy. In the general election, Berg unseated Pomeroy by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent, becoming the first Republican since 1980 to represent North Dakota’s at-large congressional district. His campaign drew significant financial support from the real estate sector, with Goldmark Property Management, Inc., his longtime business affiliation, serving as his largest single donor. Berg took office on January 3, 2011, and during his term he served on the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees taxation, trade, Social Security, and major federal entitlement programs.

During his congressional service from 2011 to 2013, Berg pursued a consistently conservative legislative agenda. He voted for the budget proposal advanced by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, which sought to restructure Medicare and Medicaid, and he strongly supported a balanced-budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Berg was a vocal advocate for gun rights, voting in favor of the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act and earning “A” and “A+” ratings from the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund. Reflecting his rural background, he joined nearly 60 other members of Congress in a letter to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction urging that the critical access hospital (CAH) program, which supports small rural hospitals—including one in his hometown of Hettinger—not be cut. He worked to curtail regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency, arguing that “overreaching government regulations” harmed small businesses and job creation in North Dakota. Berg also proposed expanded oil drilling on federal lands, including in North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park, as a means of generating revenue to help fund Social Security. He maintained a firmly anti-abortion stance, voting to prohibit federal funds from being used for health care plans that cover abortions, and he opposed same-sex marriage. In Congress he was active in a wide range of caucuses, including the Congressional Western Caucus, Unmanned Systems Caucus, General Aviation Caucus, Coal Caucus, Friends of Norway Caucus, Job Creators Caucus, E-911 Caucus, National Archives Caucus, Rural Health Care Coalition, Sportsman Caucus, Sugar Caucus, House National Guard and Reserve Caucus, and the Congressional Prayer Caucus, reflecting both his policy priorities and his ties to North Dakota’s economic and cultural interests.

On May 16, 2011, while still in his first term in the House, Berg announced that he would run for the United States Senate seat being vacated by retiring Democratic incumbent Kent Conrad. He became the Republican nominee and faced former North Dakota Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, in the November 6, 2012, general election. Election night results indicated that Berg had lost by 2,936 votes, a margin of less than 1 percent of the ballots cast statewide. Because of the narrow difference, he initially declined to concede, but after further counting confirmed the outcome, he publicly acknowledged Heitkamp’s victory the following day. His Senate bid ended his tenure in the House after a single term, as he did not seek re-election to his at-large seat while running for higher office.

Following his departure from Congress in January 2013, Berg returned to private life and to his longstanding involvement in the real estate industry. A businessman and former legislator with deep roots in rural North Dakota, he has remained associated with the Goldmark family of companies and continues to be identified with the pro-business, socially conservative positions that characterized his long service in the North Dakota House of Representatives and his term in the U.S. House of Representatives.