Posted on 10/30/2007 5:43:24 PM PDT by Montana Headlines
“Schweitzer won Yellowstone County (Billings) in the last election”
That’s something I wouldn’t have expected. Was Bob Brown damaged there by his regional base or was there some special circumstance that made the populace of Billings Republicans defect from him?
Brown got beat all around the state. The libertarian candidate for governor who was in at least one of the debates loved to say that there were two tax-and-spend liberals on the stage with him. And there was more truth to that than anyone cared to think about.
I think a lot of Republicans stayed home, knowing that Bush would win Montana and that Rehberg would crush Lindeen in the Congressional race. This unquestionably hurt us in state legislative races — we lost seats in Billings that we should have won.
Basically what happened in the primary was that 3 Billings Republicans split the conservative vote, leaving the “moderate” Bob Brown to win the nomination. He was a poor candidate, and it was over before the race against Schweitzer ever started. (The Billings Republican who came in a distant second is now in federal prison for securities fraud, so there was a silver lining behind that loss.)
One factor that helped Schweitzer was that he picked Republican state Sen. John Bohlinger of Billings to be his running mate. They trumpeted around that it was a bipartisan ticket, and all of that.
Now, Bohlinger was the Jim Jeffords of the state legislature. Never saw a Democratic bill he didn’t like, an never saw a Republican bill he did like. And it kept getting worse as the years went by.
He represented a heavily Democratic section of Billings, so he could never be challenged successfully in a primary, and the GOP basically learned to accept him. We had such big legislative majorities in the 1990’s that it didn’t matter.
We Republicans are much more tolerant of diversity than Dems are, and that came back to bite us when Schweitzer picked Bohlinger to run with him and Bohlinger accepted. Suddenly, the Democratic ticket had a Billings Republican with high name recognition and who the Yellowstone County GOP had never criticized as they perhaps should have.
So that played a role. Now, the Dems think that this will work again in 2008, but I don’t think it will. Roy Brown is a real Billings Republican (which means that he is solidly conservative but can’t be portrayed as a “wingnut,) and Lt. Gov. Bohlinger has been a snide lap dog who continues to claim to be a Republican, but who trashes Republicans every chance he gets.
Roy Brown will carry Yellowstone County — the question is whether we can help him carry the vote here and in other GOP strongholds by margins big enough to make the difference.
What a wonderfully pessimistic view. Actually Roy got termed out in the House, is serving his FIRST term in the Senate. This choice was difficult for him, but it was done with the interests of the state. As weird as it may seem now a days, Roy actually thinks in terms of what is best for the people of the State of Montana.
Roy’s district has always been fairly liberal too. In the beginning when he first ran for House they said that it was unwinnable. He just keeps proving them wrong. His plain spoken style and common sense approach just seems to resonate.
All very true. We’ve got us a good one.
-—What a wonderfully pessimistic view.-—
There’s a lot to be pessimistic about. This is my forth year in Montana and here are some of the things I’ve seen:
In the Flathead, Republican supervisors supported a Democrat running for supervisor because they thought the Republican candidate was too far right.
Bob Brown ran the worst campaign for governor that I can recall. “He fought a grizzly bear and lived to tell the story...”
Then there was Keenan running against Burns in the primary. I sent him an emil question on his position on the southern border fence and the upcoming passport requirement for Canada. He sent me a reply saying how much he loved his passport and how he was looking forward to getting them for his whole family. On the border fence he gave me some blather about the Berlin Wall! The story I’ve heard is that he was only running against Burns to lend him legitimacy.
Then there was the Burns-Tester match-up. I kept waiting for the Burns ads to kick in on the local talk radio. Tester was running 2 ads to his 1 until the very last week. Where did all the money go?
This is an overwhelmingly conservative state and the Dims are eating our lunch.
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