Port: Ndgop Director Says Legislator's Online Bio Was 'trolled' To Include Support For 'swinging'

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MINOT — Until this morning, the North Dakota Republican Party's online bio for incumbent state Rep. Jim Kasper stated that the longtime lawmaker "has quietly championed the rights of various lifestyle communities, advocating for personal freedom and privacy in consensual adult relationships and swinging."

There isn't a cached version of the website online, but some of the language does still turn up in a Google search.

This language has since been removed from the NDGOP's website, though the language was preserved by the candidate himself. Kasper noticed the error, printed out a copy, and hand-wrote the date and time on it. A copy of his note has been circulated widely among his legislative colleagues, one of whom shared it with me.

I spoke with Andrew Nyhus, executive director of the NDGOP, and he confirmed what he called the "trolling" of Kasper's bio. He said the client had contacted him but didn't characterize the conversation. "Yes, I heard from Jim," is all he would tell me.

How did this happen?

"We had distributed a form to the candidates asking if they would please provide a headshot and some bio for our website," he told me. He said the form was open to anyone who had a link, and that someone must have edited Kasper's information. "A troll put some of that in there," he said. "Someone used that form and said I'm James Kasper."

"That's the state party's mistake," he added. "We clearly have some work to do on our cybersecurity."

Nyhus told me that he wasn't aware of any malicious editing to any other candidate's information. As for who edited Kasper's information? "We'll do some digging to see if we can trace," he said. "It was a small list of people who got it."

Kasper did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.