Gov. Schweitzer and Montana Democrats Reflect on Success

"We have what I call a salmon economy – all our young leave the state and then they come home to die,” Mr. Schweitzer said. "That’s what I want to change. Because this state has a mystique like no other.”

By TIMOTHY EGAN

(Thanks to Headwaters News and the Center for the Rocky Mountain West for passing this along. Russ)

For nearly two decades, a Democrat with true power in the statehouse of Montana has been about as rare as a palm tree on the high plains. But this week, while Democrats elsewhere are moping through the last days of a prolonged wake, the Big Sky party stalwarts cannot stop pinching themselves.

On election night, as President Bush was winning all but a half-dozen of Montana’s 56 counties, the Democrats took every statewide office but one. They gained control of the governor’s office and the State Senate and came within a single legislative victory of sharing control of the State House. They did it with the kind of candidates who may offer some hint as to how the party can find its way in the vast inland sea of Republican red.

The Democratic governor-elect, Brian Schweitzer, is a rancher who knows fertilizer from fungus, and can spit and talk health care at the same time. Between hugs, high-fives and hastily called news conferences from his makeshift office under the Capitol rotunda here Wednesday, he was as worried about his cattle as his cabinet.

"I’ve got to get my cattle off the high ground and get them castrated before the winter," said Mr. Schweitzer, a whirl of energy in a pair of blue jeans.

In the campaign, he never shied away from talking about faith, or his family’s attachment to the land. "I’m the grandson of homesteaders who lived in a sod house," he said in an interview. "We were raised Democrats and we are family people. Voters needed to know that."

He also ran with a Republican as lieutenant governor – by his choice, ruffling the feathers of some members of his own party. But John Bohlinger, his running mate, is a "John McCain kind of progressive Republican," Mr. Schweitzer added.

His success is not unparalleled. There are now four Democratic governors in the interior West, in Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico and Arizona. Colorado elected a new Democratic senator, Ken Salazar. And the Democrats had some history to draw on here, a state that has one Democratic senator, Max Baucus, and voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 before it moved sharply to the Republicans.

Still, even Republicans here are tipping their hats to the Democrats for neutralizing difficult cultural issues like same-sex marriage, which was also on the ballot here, and being willing to blur party lines. "It’s very unusual, in fact, I don’t think it’s ever happened for their gubernatorial candidate to run with a Republican, but it worked," said Chuck Denowh, the executive director of the Montana Republican Party. "And on gay marriage, all the statewide Democrats were against it."

Democrats themselves said their success came from their choice of close-to the-ground candidates, their efforts to make sure people knew they stood with the state’s majority on social matters like same-sex marriages or guns, and their decision to turn to economic issues.

"We defined ourselves before the other party could," said Brad Martin, executive director of the Montana Democratic Party. "And then we ran on things like the fact that we lead the nation in percentage of households where people have to work two jobs, and we’re at the bottom for average wages."

When the subject of gay marriage came up, Democrats looked the other way, or in most cases took the same side as 67 percent of voters did in favoring a state initiative that banned same-sex marriage.

To dispatch the gun issue, always trouble for open-space Democrats, the party organized sportsmen to show up at gun shows armed and pro-Second Amendment. There, they talked about hunting access and how wildlife habitat was threatened by Republican policies.

And their candidates were hardly outsiders. Not only was Mr. Schweitzer a rancher in a state where cattle outnumber people by more than two to one, the leader of the newly Democratic State Senate, Jon Tester, is an organic grain farmer who lives on his family’s prairie homestead. In the campaign, he hit the road in his pickup, traveling to dying little towns on the windswept eastern plains to talk about how poor Montana has become under Republican leadership.

"I’m just a dirt farmer, but I know rural Montana is hurting big-time, and the Republicans weren’t doing anything to help it," Mr. Tester said. He grows barley, peas and lentils on the family farm near the little town of Big Sandy (population: 710).

"I bought a new pickup on Sept. 1, and between then and Election Day I put 8,500 miles on it talking about the same thing: how to help small businesses and farmers," he said. "Not one person asked me about gay marriage."

Republicans say they were hurt by the extreme unpopularity of their outgoing governor, Judy Martz, who decided not to run for a second term after three out of four Montanans told pollsters they disapproved of her job performance. She had entered office saying she wanted to become "a lapdog for industry."

There were embarrassments and scandals on Governor Martz’s watch. After a nasty primary that split Republicans, the party settled on Secretary of State Bob Brown, who was defeated by Mr. Schweitzer by nearly five percentage points.

Democrats say their success came from concentrating on kitchen-table economic issues in a state with a history of scrappy class warfare.

They hammered away at utility deregulation, which has led to higher power bills in a state that once had some of the nation’s cheapest electrical costs. They criticized tax breaks given to large corporations, even as good jobs continued to disappear.

"Montana is known as the Last Best Place," said Dave Wanzenried, the House Democratic leader. "But after a long period of Republican rule, we became the best place to be last."

Opposing gay marriage and adding a Republican to the top of the ticket upset some of the Democratic faithful, leaders said. But the Democrats have been out of power for so long – it has been 20 years since they last elected a Democratic governor – that it forced a unified message, with tight discipline.

Mr. Schweitzer, 49, constantly talked up plans to lift Montana from the bottom of all 50 states in wages. He says he wants to slow the collapse of rural Montana by finding new use for crops like mint (it can be added to low-grade diesel fuel, he said) and plans to pool small businesses to give them more leverage in purchasing health care.

In this state, which has a population of just under a million, family values were all about trying to keep young people from moving away because of the poor wage foundation, Democrats said.

"We have what I call a salmon economy – all our young leave the state and then they come home to die,” Mr. Schweitzer said. "That’s what I want to change. Because this state has a mystique like no other.”

Republicans say this may be the Democrats’ high-water mark. They note that Montana’s lone representative in Congress, Denny Rehberg, a Republican, won by a larger margin than Mr. Bush, who took 59 percent of the vote on Election Day.

"It’s going to be a short-lived majority in the State Senate," said Mr. Denowh, the state Republican Party head. "Especially if they try to push for something like civil unions for gays."

Political experts said the election proved, at least on the local level, that the big red states are not lost causes for the right kind of Democrat. And for all those Democrats now poring over Thomas Frank’s book "What’s the Matter with Kansas?" on why Democrats get crushed on the prairie, Mr. Martin, the state party head, suggests another query.

"Maybe some of the answers for Democrats are in looking at what’s right in Montana," he said.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company