Montana’s political arena has had its fair share of bizarre campaigns, candidates, endorsements and swinging pendulums. But here in the “dog days” of summer, when thoughts turn more to enjoying our incredible state’s natural wonders than wondering about our states politicians and their promises, the political arena is boiling hot.
Montana’s senior senator, Steve Daines, is cashing it in and not running for re-election, leaving an open seat for whomever garners the votes to win it. The race was off to a bizarre start when Daines’ hand-picked successor, Kurt Alme, filed on the last day to do so immediately following Daines’ last-minute decision to depart his senate seat.
Many in the Republican Party weren’t particularly thrilled by having their choices made for them rather than through the standard procedure of a primary election. But that horse left the barn — and them — in the dust.
Then there are the Democrats. Jon Tester was Montana’s senator for 18 years, but lost his re-election bid to wealthy in-migrant Tim Sheehy and has been fuming on the sidelines, trying find someone to blame ever since.
Now Tester has waded into the senate race with the bizarre endorsement of independent Seth Bodnar rather than Alani Bankhead, who actually won the Democratic primary. Tester claims the Democrat label is “poisonous,” has pulled promised funding from the party and was joined in his endorsement of Bodnar by another former senator, Max Baucus.
And here’s where it gets weird: Former Democratic governor Brian Schweitzer has bucked their choice and thrown his support behind Bankhead who is, after all, the Democrat candidate. It’s been a long time since this columnist agreed with the “Coal Cowboy” on much of anything. But this time around Schweitzer is sticking true to his party and to the choice of Montana’s voters in the Demo primary who backed Bankhead.
They say money is the “mother’s milk” of politics, in which case Bodnar’s couple million bucks in his campaign warchest seem to make him the milkman for endorsements from disparate sources including old Demo politicians to the Montana Conservation Voters.
The Democratic Party, however, is not taking this laying down. The new Executive Director, Emily Marburger, fired off an op-ed column taking Bodnar to task as “another man who looked away” in the face of sexual discrimination allegations from 18 former and current University of Montana employees. That carries weight, as shown by Graham Platner’s decision this week to withdraw from the Maine senate race due to accusations of sexual abuse.
That leaves the Democratic Party on the horns of a dilemma, in part of its own making due to the Bodnar endorsements from former high ranking Democrats like Tester and Baucus, both of whom believe you go with the milkman and the money — despite Tester losing after raising a record $91 million for his campaign.
So this week, 17 of 60 Democratic legislators sent a letter to both Bodnar and Bankhead pleading with one of them to drop out of the race rather than hand Alme the senate seat. That seems a futile effort since Bankhead has already publicly said Bodnar is the “last person on the face of this earth” she would ever drop out for. Her position seems justified since a late June poll showed Bodnar at 17% to Bankhead’s 25%.
Given Alme’s 41% in that poll, the combination of Bodnar and Bankhead voters would make it a horserace against Alme — and the outcome of that race may well depend on which candidate best addresses the issues that truly match Montanans’ concerns.
Helena, MT
