There’s an anecdote from North Dakota dating back about 15 years that perfectly sums up both the culture of the state – the third-least populous in the mainland US – and the trajectory of one of its most celebrated daughters.
Future Miss America Cara Mund, now 30, was then a tenth grader performing in the capital’s annual Band Night, when throngs of North Dakotans crowd Bismarck for a parade featuring regional high schoolers and community organizations. Mund marched one lap as a percussionist playing the snare drum with her school band; then she dashed to change into an evening gown and sash to march another as Miss North Dakota Outstanding Teen.
A high-achieving only child with a big smile from a family with a generations-long North Dakota pedigree, Mund seemed blessed with a blueprint for small-state-girl-done-good – and within a few years, she’d earned two Ivy League degrees and been crowned Miss America. Now she’s running for Congress in an attempt to become the first woman to represent North Dakota in the House.
“I never wanted Miss America to be my peak in life,” Mund told The Independent. “I wanted it to be the springboard for whatever comes next.”
Lest her successful path belie a penchant for toeing the line, however, Mund is running as a pro-choice Republican who “will not bow” to Donald Trump, she says – in a state that’s more than three-quarters heavily conservative, according to the Pew Research Center. Mund’s ever-present smile shines through in her voice, infused with the upbeat intonations of a seasoned pageant winner; there is a steady steeliness, however, to every word she utters.
Mund excoriated the 45th president with an answer during the 2017 Miss America competition which ultimately won her the crown; during her reign the following year, the Brown University alum took the hierarchy of the pageant itself to task. Mund sent a letter to former Miss Americas accusing the organization of bullying and manipulation, further throwing into turmoil a culture already battling a reputation for outdatedness and sexism.
“I had a very difficult year as Miss America and eventually spoke out,” says Mund. “That really made me realize the power of my voice … despite all of the turmoil, I walked out like a very confident woman in who I am and that I’m not afraid to say something – and that wasn’t necessarily the case during the year.
“There are parts of me that wish I would have said something sooner – and now, the woman I am today, I probably would have.”
Her 2024 congressional campaign, she says, is a direct result of not seeing anyone reflecting the woman she is today – or her values – amongst the candidate pool.
“Had I not jumped in the race, I don’t know which candidate of the House I would have voted for – because, to me, they’re all the same,” she says, adding that she believes lack of options accounts for low voter turnout in her state.
“We need to re-energize and realize that we don’t have to stick with the status quo. We can be innovative; we can have great debate … but when the name-calling comes, and when you have people in there that you know exactly how they’re going to vote, just based on what they’re told to do, you lose your voice.
“So I’m hoping that all of my voters are definitely those that maybe wouldn’t have voted in the primary otherwise. Fed-up Republican women – they’re my voters.”
It’s not the first time Mund has thrown her hat in the ring; she ran as an independent in 2022, entering the race after party primaries were over. Mund made the decision right after graduating from Harvard Law School, while studying for the bar, amidst the leak of the Dobbs decision forecasting the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
“I knew, after the leak … that there is a high possibility that this could become a reality – and in a state like North Dakota, I also knew that we had a trigger ban, and women would not have the rights to their reproductive health care,” she says.”
“I’ll have children here in North Dakota,” she continued. “Knowing that most of the individuals making these decisions are men. I just did not feel comfortable with it. And so when the Dobbs decision came down in 2022, the two candidates for the US House were both candidates that did not support women’s reproductive health, and that even included the Democrat.
“And so I could either sit by and complain about it, or I could jump in the race and be that voice and that advocate. And I really did feel like I was not alone in my beliefs.”
She’s likely not wrong, given aspects of North Dakota’s voting record on abortion. Ten years ago, despite the state’s heavily conservative leanings and well-financed campaign, the legislature struck down a proposal to enshrine in the constitution “the inalienable right to life of every human being at any stage of development.”
“It was quite a big defeat, which was huge, especially as a state that is primarily red,” Mund says. “It was a big awakening of: Okay, we do value women’s rights; we value privacy.”
Mund only announced her first congressional bid after taking the bar in August 2022 and was “really running my campaign on my own;” still, the Democratic candidate dropped out and Mund, despite losing, walked away with about 36 percent of the vote. She was bolstered by the results in such “a short amount of” time – but even more so by the feedback she got from voters.
“There were so many people that had just reached out and said: ‘Thank you. I feel like I finally have a voice.’ Or the number of messages I got where they’d give a donation, and it would just have a note in there that would say: ‘For my daughter.’ ‘For my granddaughter.’”
Those messages helped Mund make the decision to run again for the House, filing paperwork last month to enter the race as a Republican; she’s one of five candidates battling to fill the seat of Rep. Kelly Armstrong, who is running for governor. Mund says the state GOP, which has endorsed veteran and former US State Department employee Alex Balazs, did not invite her to participate in the first debate; she complains there are “a few columnists in the state that like to call me the celebrity candidate.”
She’s undoubtedly well known across North Dakota as the first Miss America hailing from the state; the governor even declared “Miss America Cara Mund Day” in 2017 in celebration of her win, and the state museum has featured her. But that notoriety is “really a double-edged sword,” she says.
“It does give you a name recognition, but at the same time, I am constantly having to battle the stereotype of what people expect,” Mund says, noting that she held the title for “one year of my life.”
“I went to law school for three years,” she notes, and has been a lawyer even longer.
She hopes that, next, she can represent and fight for the North Dakota women and moderates who comprise what she believes to be a significant portion of the voting bloc.
“They’ll come up and they might whisper: ‘Voting for you,” she says. “North Dakota, in general, is a bit more reserved – and I just think people don’t necessarily want to be extremely vocal, and then those that are, I’m so appreciative of it, because it just shows to those that are maybe silently supporting, that they are not alone.”
Thoughts of the future family she hopes for, she reiterates, continue to hugely influence her campaign platforms.
“I come from a family of women that I expect it to be difficult to get pregnant and to be able to have a child – and I am very concerned about having kids in the state of North Dakota,” she says. “So it’s something top of mind. And we have one of the strictest bans now in the country … as a lawyer, too, I mean, with our trigger ban, I personally do not want to be in a hospital bed having to read case law … it’s just not a place for the government to be.”
“In North Dakota, the Republican Party recently had a resolution that was also on banning IVF … this really is women’s reproductive health care, women’s health care, actually, just broadly across the spectrum. And it’s also control of women.”
There is something particularly fascinating about the lack of support for Trump from Mund – a pageant queen with an effortless image in the style of the female politicians staunchly behind him. She’s poised and articulate with even the same long tresses beloved by GOP women; the 30-year-old lawyer, however, bristles at the mention of him.
“The reality is, he could become the next president, and, as the representative of North Dakota, I’ll have to work with him,” she says. “But I will not worship him … the other candidates, no one will speak out against him.”
She noted that at the governor’s debate, one candidate said Trump’s name 18 times, and at the House candidate debate, another said his name 16 times.
“When these candidates are campaigning just on him, or what they’re going to do, it’s like: You’re a representative of our whole state,” Mund says. “And there might be policies – even if a Democrat’s president, if the president is a Republican president – there might be policies that don’t work for North Dakota, or you’re going to have to cross the aisle because the policy is really great for North Dakota.”
Mund is trying to hammer home those points to voters as she hits the campaign trail – popping up at meet-and-greets across North Dakota and even, years after her turn as a percussionist and pageant winner, joining marchers again this month in the annual Bismarck Eckroth Music Band Night parade.
“People are electing us because they want us to do a job, and it’s crucial that we have someone in there who’s actually going to be an independent thinker … who’s going to think critically about what’s the best thing I can do for my state and the people who put me here,” she tells The Independent. “Because they can put you there as quickly as they can take you out.”
