BOZEMAN, Mont. The only reason to be a Democrat running for statewide office in Montana is that, alas, you are one. Just keep in mind that there will be none of that heady, audacity-of-hope-type jazz. In this cold, conservative state, your mission is to persuade the skeptics east of the Rocky Mountain Front that you are a levelheaded, friendly, capitalist adult who wont be levitating the Pentagon a task that has gotten considerably easier since the Republican establishment lost interest in basic empiricism.
Privately, feel free to enjoy normal liberal thoughts like that Al Sharpton makes a lot of sense. Publicly, assume that everyone you talk to is a Republican or an independent unless you are chatting with the Butterfly Herbs cashier ringing up your bulk Korean ginseng or you happen to bump into Jeff from Pearl Jam. If anyone asks, your favorite artist is the Great Falls cowboy painter Charlie Russell, though nobody will, because it goes without saying.
If you believe in abortion rights, and tragically, you do, follow the lead of the states senior senator, Jon Tester, a Democrat and third-generation farmer from Big Sandy. Frame the issue as the rugged individualism of a womans right to make her own health care decisions, preferably while seated on a tractor. All Democratic officials in the Central and Mountain time zones surely envy the rural romance of Mr. Tester, whose three missing fingers, mangled in a meat grinder on the family farm, are the Montana electoral equivalent of being a Kennedy. A good rule for politicians still shackled with all 10 fingers is to trust Senator Testers instincts on everything but haircuts. He understands that a westward conscience (and a passing interest in re-election) sometimes compels a Montana Democrat to question coastal leftist groupthink just ask Bernie Sanders about Max Baucus, but not if there are ladies present.
The exemplar remains the most powerful Montana Democrat in American history, Mike Mansfield. The longest-serving Senate majority leader, he quietly egged on his Republican counterpart, Everett Dirksen, to help pass the Great Society laws, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (back when, according to the 1960 census, the black population of Montana was 0.2 percent).
Senator Mansfields most relevant legacy is arguably the origin story of the Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Bidens professed bipartisanship. When a young Senator Biden griped about a heartless Republican, Mr. Mansfield counseled him to find the good in his colleagues, to see what their state saw in voting for them, adding, And Joe, never attack another mans motive, because you dont know his motive. Mr. Biden later wrote, Its probably the single most important piece of advice I got in my career.
The current administration of Gov. Steve Bullock, a two-term Democrat, has been reminiscent of the old, functional Mansfield Senate. At a time when Washington impotence is symbolized by how Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, shamelessly refers to himself as the grim reaper, its worth contemplating a deceptively bland talking point from Mr. Bullocks failed presidential bid and current U.S. Senate campaign, his pledge to make Washington work more like Montana.
He is not proposing to export the Miles City Bucking Horse Sale to the National Mall, though who wouldnt want to see that. He is simply alluding to the fact that in our state capital Helena, elected officials from both parties negotiate with one another and the chief executive to pass laws that actually help people. And just as Mr. Mansfield would tiptoe across the aisle to exploit the rift between centrist Republicans and conservative insurgents like Barry Goldwater, Mr. Bullock has capitalized on a civil war among Montana conservatives in a way that might be instructive to the country at large though the methodology works only if the rest of you can scrape up a few lucid Republicans. (Try harder, Kentucky.)
The Republican legislators are torn between the . 38 Special, a petulant Tea Party-tinged cabal, and the Solutions Caucus of businesslike conservatives who will stick with the right wing on bedrock beliefs like limiting abortion one bill provoked a Bullock veto but will vote with the Democrats when doing so solves a logistical problem or staves off needless idiocy. They sided with the Democrats, for example, to kill a bill that would have prohibited the state health department from requiring vaccinations of day care employees and children. When some of them partnered with Democrats to reauthorize Medicaid expansion, jars of petroleum jelly materialized on their desks like the severed horse head in The Godfather, apparently to help them sodomize the citizens of Montana. (By giving more of us better, cheaper health care?)
One of the two legislators Governor Bullock appointed to his statewide council of business leaders to recommend divvying up federal Covid-19 stimulus grants was State Representative Llew Jones, a Republican from Conrad. It was a deft, bipartisan campaign move, but also astute management, in that Mr. Jones, a member of the Solutions Caucus, is a thoughtful public servant with a masters degree in economics.
For Mr. Bullock, good government and good politics are often indistinguishable. Compared with the dystopian whimsy of President Trumps pandemic news conferences, Mr. Bullocks straightforward public briefings have featured him calmly enumerating statistical data from county health departments and issuing updates on what turned out to be an effective statewide stay-at-home order.
The only time the governor has sounded remotely frazzled was on a conference call pleading with Mr. Trump for more tests for the viral epicenter Gallatin County, incidentally the home district of his adversary in the Senate race, the Republican incumbent, Steve Daines. A recent state poll shows Mr. Bullock ahead but in a tight contest with Mr. Daines, a former software executive.
In this state and others in our time zone like Arizona and Colorado, where Democrats have a shot at lassoing Senate seats the current crisis seems to call for the Mansfield-style empathy for their opponents that Mountain West Democrats must have to be politically viable, because the virus itself is a small d democrat that smites an assisted-living home in Montanas Toole County as well as the British prime minister.
When Mr. Jones, the Solutions Caucus representative, had to explain to his conservative agrarian constituents why he supports something as seemingly woo-woo as Medicaid expansion, he brought up the toughest person I ever met, his nonagenarian retired rancher mother, who taught him how to birth a lamb and worked until she was 86. He insisted she deserves access to her small rural hospital, noting that until Obamacare is repealed and replaced with something better he would work within the current system to provide health care for the true Montana people like his mom.
Roughly 10 percent of the states population are a bunch of wimps who live in Billings to say nothing of dainty Bozeman eggheads personified by yours truly and Steve Daines but the law Mr. Jones supported and Governor Bullock signed applies to any qualified state resident. Mr. Jones, who won his district with literally 100 percent of the vote, can and should tailor his message to his like-minded neighbors.
Mr. Bullock, who won his last election by four miraculous points, throws around the one-size-fits-all word Montanans so often that the Rocking R Bar should institute a drinking game. He shows up in the news every day trying his hardest to help everybody. He has to. He needs every single vote.
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How Democrats Win in Montana (and They Do Win) - The New York Times