Rehberg’s loss was one big WTF moment, but then again, most of the competitive Senate races that year were WTF moments (seriously, we only flipped Ben Nelson’s open seat? I still am floored by that).
I think Berg also had a bunch of problems like using the franking privilege too much and coming off as an out of touch elitist. If Daines has a more down to earth appeal, he may do better. Then again, Montana isn’t that big population-wise, so perhaps we could pluck someone from the state legislature for the job. (I think Tester was Senate president or something) Or maybe Montana has a Ron Johnson-type somewhere?
Yup, flipped just Nelson’s seat (and had he not retired, we might’ve blown winning that one). As it was, we knocked off precisely zero incumbents in the Senate (and as I’ve said may times, we have never beaten more than 2 incumbents since after 1980. An absolutely flooring and inexcusable statistic... and even in 1994, still just two (Wofford in PA and Sasser here in my state of TN by Frist)).
The heartbreaking one was ex-Congressman Rick Hill’s excruciatingly narrow loss for MT Governor. After the GOP’s huge wins in the legislature under the vile Schweitzer, Hill’s win should’ve been assured. I’ve always found it more than a bit curious how Republicans have lost scores of races in MT (statewide/federal) by tiny margins.
The former MT GOP Senate leader, Corey Stapleton, is considered the biggest candidate in the race so far for Baucus’s seat. Daines will have to make up his mind soon, but I still think it may be too early and too risky for him to run, given that he hasn’t even held office statewide for 2 months. Might be safer and easier for him to stay put for now and either run against Gov. Bullock in ‘16 or Tester in ‘18.